(shuddup I cant find a good portmanteau there)
But gather round friends, and i shall regail you with the tales of the BOT, and his mad few weeks. I had previously decided upon 3 goals to improve my working life.I dont hate my job, which made it worse.

get off 'on call' (difficulty : hard - almost EVERY it job has this to some degree) , so I can forget my job past 6pm at night.
get a payrise (easy - london has high rates for IT jobs and a massive lack of experienced people).
get a shorter commute (tricky).

For a while now, i've been getting linkedin enquiries, because being an experienced Linux sysadmin in London puts you madly in demand. Typically its one enquiry per day, and i mostly ignore them or read them on the train home for something to do , but recently i had an enquiry from the BBC, so i decided to respond to that one. And another one at the same time as it paid 50% more than i earn now., and I applied for an interesting role I'd seen advertised , which was a bit strange - more of a company advert than a job one.So that's three jobs at once. But i also have Cold From Hell coming on.
so thats;

betting job, pay great, commute worse but same as bbc, on call 1/6 of the time. Unstable sector. 20% bonus a year.
BBC job - pay ok, commute worse than now, on call but 1/5 off the time. Stable company, but bureacracy and unsure on long term potential. Hard to get pay rises.
consulting job - no on call (hurrah!) , commute about the same. Not sure on pay. But closer to what i want to do, more dealing with people.

Being aweome they all loved my CV, and so the results of this were i had a week with THREE seperate phone interviews at lunchtime. Thankfully there's a nice little park hidden away near work that I could go to and do those, so i got all three done in a crazy week tue/wed/thu lunchtimes. It was pretty stressful, but I got it done. back to relaxing for a while. Cold keeps getting worse, but I drudge onwards. Then the next week comes around and then I have interview invites;
So i get the suit out, a few new shirts in (yay M&S) and then go to the high-paying betting company job on monday afternoon, the bbc on tuesday afternoon, and then the 3rd job i applied for gives me a 5 question timed essay to do, which i sort in one evening and send them back. I'm very torn by the high paying job, the interview went really well, but it is a bit morally dubious. But the pay scale is crazy, i have to at least consider it. Very shiny office.
The BBC interview also goes well, because i'm awesome at interviews, I always prepare well and have tons of questions to ask. They love me. I like it, but i really want #3. #3 then wants a 2nd technical phone interview, so i find a Pret (urgh!) to do that in one lunchtime (again!), and that also goes really well, because i'm great :D
I was worried at this point that #1 was gonna offer me something I couldn't refuse (huge pay rise, 50%!), or that i'd have a BBC offer before #3 had even interviewed me. Stress was had. And getting all the time off work was starting to look suspicious. Argh. But something was going my way - job #1 got back to me in a few days to say they'd gone with an internal candidate (i have a 3 months notice, vs internal straight away, and they can be paid less etc)., that's cool, it makes my life easier. BBC recruiter gets back to me a week after the interview to say he still hasnt had feedback (WTF guys you loved me ? take 5 mins and let your recruiter know that!!), and #3 finally gets back to me and they want an actual casual interview>
So i head over there one wednesday afternoon (having used work flexi time to leave early), into their office INSIDE A GIANT CASTLE have a casual chat with 3 seperate people. answer lots of questions, do some technical tests. Then I get asked to estimate how many piano repair shops are in new york. wtf?! But i stand up and do some maths on their whiteboard. Estimate population of new york, how many people i know and how many have pianos. Assume one tune up per year, 5 done per day in the piano shop, apply all the maths together and BAM there is 1 piano repair shop in NY. (rounded up from 0.7) My estimates are all bullshit, but whatever, I come up with an answer based on some estimates, they like it. I ask for a tour round the office, because this is looking good. they have a 3d printer you can play with, noise booths for phone call privacy and not to disturb the rest of the office. Interesting. They are also very devoted to staff training/dev , and they won an award i cant mention (because you'd know the company), for being one of the best companies to work for in the UK recently. I end up leaving after over 2hrs, which is always a good sign. They'll be in touch tomorrow they say, and they arent put off my by 3 month notice period. Oh i really want this job. Pleasepleaseplease.
Next day, phone call from a lovely lady called Estelle (awesome name is awesome), with an offer. I bump the salary up a bit as its lower than i'd like, but I accept it at a 15% pay rise on now, and sign the contract electronically, return it etc, all done.
I inform current work, tell the BBC who still didnt get back to me i'm no longer available and i think I can relax, start dreaming about my new life. No more stressing, it's all done.
but no, BossBoss (Boss of Boss), wants to discuss a counter offer with me. Ok sure, i tell him, i'll listen, why not. I dont expect much. 4pm friday rolls around, its almost time to go home. Quick meeting before i do - counter offer comes in. Matching my new salary and £1000 a month bonus till they find a new role for me, min of 3 months. Holy fucking shit. That's a crazy amount of month. That's 3k before xmas. After tax. I know the company, this could drag on 6 , 12 months. That's a lot of pennies. OH GOD. What the hell do i do. I walk to london bridge station to go home. Still no idea. Call my dad, he has no idea. Call everyone i know, they have no idea. Argh! Decide to let new place know about the counter, maybe it'll up their offer which was lower than i wanted overall.
have THE MOST STRESSFUL WEEKEND EVER. That money is too good to refuse. Argh, wtf do i do! Never before have jobs kept me awake at night stressing. I go to the zoo because i need to not spend all weekend wondering about this. So much thinking, what do i really want, argh. Eventually, come sunday, i decide that as good as the money is, all the things that appeal to me about the new job are not money. The training (among the best % of trained staff in europe/theworld for what they do), the not being on call so i can forget my job at 6pm every night, the chance to travel a bit. The 3d printer in the office that im going to print RED PANDAS ON BABY oh yes.
monday morning rolls around, I let new and old places know of my decision. Still torn by it. But i can finally relax, even if i will be not as rich. 88 days to go. from 2015 i have a new job, it's exciting, it's scary, it's going to be awesome :D

get off 'on call'- DONE
get a payrise - DONE
get a shorter commute (tricky).- failed. But there's potential for that to improve, and transport links to new place are fantastic.

Hopefully now i can float my way to 2015 :D
(also, I would like to take this moment to say a huge thankyou to Girlwithnousername - she has the wisdom of a sage, and is invaluable for life advice. And style advice. Even if hat sometimes happens over skype at 2am.)

The company I worked for failed, through no fault of engineers, and I’m looking for a job right now. What is my best bet for places to look. I just don’t know where to post my resume besides national or programmer sites. Is there a place for experienced DevOps people to find/recruit people?

Nevada bet that big tax breaks for companies like Tesla would bring in jobs. Here's what actually happened.

The only way insurance companies can do their job and make money is by betting more accurately than not that you’re better off saving your insurance dues in a savings account than buying their services.

@CNBC: Most bosses know a good night's sleep will drastically improve their staff's job performance — and this company is betting money on it. via @CNBCMakeIt https://t.co/pBbBfePHxc

@TheEconomist: Betting companies warn that the change will eliminate jobs in the industry. But the old limit may have done the same https://t.co/SptPb3Kgqu

The 8th Apple employee shows before and after pictures of his office

This week 12 yrs ago--Lehman Bros collapsed......(Best Interest) Explaining the Big Short and the 2008 Crisis

edit: thanks for the awards. I'd be a dick to take credit. Go check out the one-man-band who actually wrote it---I've been reading for a couple months, good stuff https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/
(Best Interest) This post will explain the Big Short and the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse in simple terms.
This post is a little longer than usual–maybe give yourself 20 minutes to sift through it. But I promise you’ll leave feeling like you can tranche (that’s a verb, right?!) the whole financial system!
Key Players
First, I want to introduce the players in the financial crisis, as they might not make sense at first blush. One of the worst parts about the financial industry is how they use deliberately obtuse language to explain relatively simple ideas. Their financial acronyms are hard to keep track of. In order to explain the Big Short, these players–and their roles–are key.
Individuals, a.k.a. regular people who take out mortgages to buy houses; for example, you and me!
Mortgage lenders, like a local bank or a mortgage lending specialty shop, who give out mortgages to individuals. Either way, they’re probably local people that the individual home-buyer would meet in person.
Big banks, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who buy lots of mortgages from lenders. After this transaction, the homeowner would owe money to the big bank instead of the lender.
Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)—deep breath!—who take mortgages from big banks and bundle them all together into a bond (see below). And just like before, this step means that the home-buyer now owes money to the CDO. Why is this done?! I’ll explain, I promise.
Ratings agencies, whose job is to determine the risk of a CDO—is it filled with safe mortgages, or risky mortgages?
Investors, who buy part of a CDO and get repaid as the individual homeowners start paying back their mortgage.
Feel lost already? I’m going to be a good jungle guide and get you through this. Stick with me.
Quick definition: Bonds
A bond can be thought of as a loan. When you buy a bond, you are loaning your money. The issuer of the bond is borrowing your money. In exchange for borrowing your money, the issuer promises to pay you back, plus interest, in a certain amount of time. Sometimes, the borrower cannot pay the investor back, and the bond defaults, or fails. Defaults are not good for the investor.
The CDO—which is a bond—could hold thousands of mortgages in it. It’s a mortgage-backed bond, and therefore a type of mortgage-backed security. If you bought 1% of a CDO, you were loaning money equivalent to 1% of all the mortgage principal, with the hope of collecting 1% of the principal plus interest as the mortgages got repaid.
There’s one more key player, but I’ll wait to introduce it. First…
The Whys, Explained
Why does an individual take out a mortgage? Because they want a home. Can you blame them?! A healthy housing market involves people buying and selling houses.
How about the lender; why do they lend? It used to be so they would slowly make interest money as the mortgage got repaid. But nowadays, the lender takes a fee (from the homeowner) for creating (or originating) the mortgage, and then immediately sells to mortgage to…
A big bank. Why do they buy mortgages from lenders? Starting in the 1970s, Wall St. started buying up groups of loans, tying them all together into one bond—the CDO—and selling slices of that collection to investors. When people buy and sell those slices, the big banks get a cut of the action—a commission.
Why would an investor want a slice of a mortgage CDO? Because, like any other investment, the big banks promised that the investor would make their money back plus interest once the homeowners began repaying their mortgages.
You can almost trace the flow of money and risk from player to player.
At the end of the day, the investor needs to get repaid, and that money comes from homeowners.
CDOs are empty buckets
Homeowners and mortgage lenders are easy to understand. But a big question mark swirls around Wall Street’s CDOs.
I like to think of the CDO as a football field full of empty buckets—one bucket per mortgage. As an investor, you don’t purchase one single bucket, or one mortgage. Instead, you purchase a thin horizontal slice across all the buckets—say, a half-inch slice right around the 1-gallon mark.
As the mortgages are repaid, it starts raining. The repayments—or rain—from Mortgage A doesn’t go solely into Bucket A, but rather is distributed across all the buckets, and all the buckets slowly get re-filled.
As long as your horizontal slice of the bucket is eventually surpassed, you get your money back plus interest. You don’t need every mortgage to be repaid. You just need enough mortgages to get to your slice.
It makes sense, then, that the tippy top of the bucket—which gets filled up last—is the highest risk. If too many of the mortgages in the CDO fail and aren’t repaid, then the tippy top of the bucket will never get filled up, and those investors won’t get their money back.
These horizontal slices are called tranches, which might sound familiar if you’ve read the book or watched the movie.
So far, there’s nothing too wrong about this practice. It’s simply moving the risk from the mortgage lender to other investors. Sure, the middle-men (banks, lenders, CDOs) are all taking a cut out of all the buy and sell transactions. But that’s no different than buying lettuce at grocery store prices vs. buying straight from the farmer. Middle-men take a cut. It happens.
But now, our final player enters the stage…
Credit Default Swaps: The Lynchpin of the Big Short
Screw you, Wall Street nomenclature! A credit default swap sounds complicated, but it’s just insurance. Very simple, but they have a key role to explain the Big Short.
Investors thought, “Well, since I’m buying this risky tranche of a CDO, I might want to hedge my bets a bit and buy insurance in case it fails.” That’s what a credit default swap did. It’s insurance against something failing. But, there is a vital difference between a credit default swap and normal insurance.
I can’t buy an insurance policy on your house, on your car, or on your life. Only you can buy those policies. But, I could buy insurance on a CDO mortgage bond, even if I didn’t own that bond!
Not only that, but I could buy billions of dollars of insurance on a CDO that only contained millions of dollars of mortgages.
It’s like taking out a $1 million auto policy on a Honda Civic. No insurance company would allow you to do this, but it was happening all over Wall Street before 2008. This scenario essentially is “the big short” (see below)—making huge insurance bets that CDOs will fail—and many of the big banks were on the wrong side of this bet!
Credit default swaps involved the largest amounts of money in the subprime mortgage crisis. This is where the big Wall Street bets were taking place.
Quick definition: Short
A short is a bet that something will fail, get worse, or go down. When most people invest, they buy long (“I want this stock price to go up!”). A short is the opposite of that.
Certain individuals—like main characters Steve Eisman (aka Mark Baum in the movie, played by Steve Carrell) and Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale) in the 2015 Oscar-nominated film The Big Short—realized that tons of mortgages were being made to people who would never be able to pay them back.
If enough mortgages failed, then tranches of CDOs start to fail—no mortgage repayment means no rain, and no rain means the buckets stay empty. If CDOs fail, then the credit default swap insurance gets paid out. So what to do? Buy credit default swaps! That’s the quick and dirty way to explain the Big Short.
Why buy Dog Shit?
Wait a second. Why did people originally invest in these CDO bonds if they were full of “dog shit mortgages” (direct quote from the book) in the first place? Since The Big Short protagonists knew what was happening, shouldn’t the investors also have realized that the buckets would never get refilled?
For one, the prospectus—a fancy word for “owner’s manual”—of a CDO was very difficult to parse through. It was hard to understand exactly which mortgages were in the CDO. This is a skeevy big bank/CDO practice. And even if you knew which mortgages were in a CDO, it was nearly impossible to realize that many of those mortgages were made fraudulently.
The mortgage lenders were knowingly creating bad mortgages*.* They were giving loans to people with no hopes of repaying them. Why? Because the lenders knew they could immediately sell that mortgage—that risk—to a big bank, which would then securitize the mortgage into a CDO, and then sell that CDO to investors. Any risk that the lender took by creating a bad mortgage was quickly transferred to the investor.
So…because you can’t decipher the prospectus to tell which mortgages are in a CDO, it was easier to rely on the CDO’s rating than to evaluate each of the underlying mortgages. It’s the same reason why you don’t have to understand how engines work when you buy a car; you just look at Car & Driver or Consumer Reports for their opinions, their ratings.
The Ratings Agencies
Investors often relied on ratings to determine which bonds to buy. The two most well-known ratings agencies from 2008 were Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (heard of the S&P 500?). The ratings agency’s job was to look at a CDO that a big bank created, understand the underlying assets (in this case, the mortgages), and give the CDO a rating to determine how safe it was. A good rating is “AAA”—so nice, it got ‘A’ thrice.
So, were the ratings agencies doing their jobs? No! There are a few explanations for this:

Even they—the experts in charge of grading the bonds—didn’t understand what was going on inside a CDO. The owner’s manual descriptions (prospectuses) were too complicated. In fact, ratings agencies often relied on big banks to teach seminars about how to rate CDOs, which is like a teacher learning how to grade tests from Timmy, who still pees his pants. Timmy just wants an A.
Ratings agencies are profit-driven companies. When they give a rating, they charge a fee. But if the agency hands out too many bad grades, then their customers—the big banks—will take their requests elsewhere in hopes of higher grades. The ratings agencies weren’t objective, but instead were biased by their need for profits.
Remember those fraudulent mortgages that the lenders were making? Unless you did some boots-on-the-ground research, it was tough to uncover this fact. It’s hard to blame the ratings agencies for not catching this.

Who’s to blame?
Everyone? Let’s play devil’s advocate…

Individuals: some people point the finger at homeowners, saying, “You should know better than to buy a $1 million house on a teacher’s salary.” I find this hard to swallow. These people, surrounded by the American home-ownership dream, were sold the idea that they would be fine. The mortgage lender had no incentive to sell a good mortgage, they only had an incentive to sell a mortgage. So, it’s hard for me to put too much blame on the homeowners.
Mortgage lenders: someone knew. I’m not saying that all the mortgage lenders were fully aware of the implications of their actions, but some people knew that fraudulent loans were being made, and chose to ignore that fact. For example, check out whistleblower Eileen Foster.
Big banks: Yes sir! There’s certainly blame here. Rather than get into all of the various money-grubbing, I want to call out one specific anecdote. Back in 2010, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein testified in front of Congress. Here it is:

To explain further, there are two things going on here.
First, Goldman Sachs bankers were selling CDOs to investors. They wanted to make a commission on the sale.
At the same time, other bankers ALSO AT GOLDMAN SACHS were buying credit default swaps, a.k.a. betting against the same CDOs that the first Goldman Sachs bankers were selling.
This is like selling someone a racehorse with cancer, and then immediately going to the track to bet against that horse. Blankfein’s defense in this video is, “But the horse seller and the bettor weren’t the same people!” And the Congressmen responds, “But they worked for the same stable, and collected the same paychecks!”
So do the big banks deserve blame? You tell me.
Inspecting Goldman Sachs
One reason Goldman Sachs survived 2008 is that they began buying credit default swaps (insurance) just in time before the housing market crashed. They were still on the bad side of some bets, but mostly on the good side. They were net profitable.
Unfortunately for them, the banks that owed Goldman money were going bankrupt from their own debt, and then Goldman never would have been able to collect on their insurance. Goldman would’ve had to payout on their “bad” bets, while not collecting on their “good” bets. In their own words, they were “toast.”
This is significant. Even banks in “good” positions would’ve gone bankrupt, because the people who owed the most money weren’t able to repay all their debts. Imagine a chain; Bank A owes money to Bank B, and B owes money to Bank C. If Bank A fails, then B can’t collect their debt, and B can’t pay C. Bank C made “good” bets, but aren’t able to collect on them, and then they go out of business.
These failures would’ve rippled throughout the world. This explains why the US government felt it necessary to bail-out the banks. That federal money allowed banks in “good” positions to collect their profits and “stop the ripple” from tearing apart the world economy. While CDOs and credit default swap explain the Big Short starting, this ripple of failure is the mechanism that affected the entire world.
Betting more than you have
But if someone made a bad bet—sold bad insurance—why didn’t they have money to cover that bet? It all depends on risk. If you sell a $100 million insurance policy, and you think there’s a 1% chance of paying out that policy, what’s your exposure? It’s the potential loss multiplied by the probability = 1% times $100 million, or $1 million.
These banks sold billions of dollars of insurance under the assumption that there was a 5%, or 3%, or 1% chance of the housing market failing. So they had 20x, or 30x, or 100x less money on hand then they needed to cover these bets.
Turns out, there was a 100% chance that the market would fail…oops!
Blame, expounded
Ratings agencies—they should be unbiased. But they sold themselves off for profit. They invited the wolves—big banks—into their homes to teach them how to grade CDOs. Maybe they should read a blog to explain the Big Short to them. Of course they deserve blame. Here’s another anecdote of terrible judgment from the ratings agencies:
Think back to my analogy of the buckets and the rain. Sometimes, a ratings agency would look at a CDO and say, “You’re never going to fill up these buckets all the way. Those final tranches—the ones that won’t get filled—they’re really risky. So we’re going to give them a bad grade.” There were “Dog Shit” tranches, and Dog Shit gets a bad grade.
But then the CDO managers would go back to their offices and cut off the top of the buckets. And they’d do this for all their CDOs—cutting off all the bucket-top rings from all the different CDO buckets. And then they’d super-glue the bucket-top rings together to create a field full of Frankenstein buckets, officially called a CDO squared. Because the Frankenstein buckets were originally part of other CDOs, the Frankenstein buckets could only start filling up once the original buckets (which now had the tops cut off) were filled. In other words, the CDO managers decided to concentrate all their Dog Shit in one place, and super glue it together.
A reasonable person would look at the Frankenstein Dog Shit field of buckets and say, “That’s turrible, Kenny.”
BUT THE RATINGS AGENCIES GAVE CDO-SQUAREDs HIGH GRADES!!! Oh I’m sorry, was I yelling?!
“It’s diversified,” they would claim, as if Poodle shit mixed with Labrador shit is better than pure Poodle shit.
Again, you tell me. Do the ratings agencies deserve blame?!
Does the government deserve blame?
Yes and no.
For example, part of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 mandated that the government mortgage finance firms (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) purchase a certain number of sub-prime mortgages.
On its surface, this seems like a good thing: it’s giving money to potential home-buyers who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for a mortgage. It’s providing the American Dream.
But as we’ve already covered today, it does nobody any good to provide a bad mortgage to someone who can’t repay it. That’s what caused this whole calamity. Freddie and Fannie and HUD were pumping money into the machine, helping to enable it. Good intentions, but they weren’t paying attention to the unintended outcomes.
And what about the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the watchdogs of Wall Street. Do they have a role to explain the Big Short? Shouldn’t they have been aware of the Big Banks, the CDOs, the ratings agencies?
Yes, they deserve blame too. They’re supposed to do things like ensure that Big Banks have enough money on hand to cover their risky bets. This is called proper “risk management,” and it was severely lacking. The SEC also had the power to dig into the CDOs and ferret out the fraudulent mortgages that were creating them. Why didn’t they do that?
Perhaps the issue is that the SEC was/is simply too close to Wall Street, similar to the ratings agencies getting advice from the big banks. Watchdogs shouldn’t get treats from those they’re watching. Or maybe it’s that the CDOs and credit default swaps were too hard for the SEC to understand.
Either way, the SEC doesn’t have a good excuse. If you’re in bed with the people you’re regulating, then you’re doing a bad job. If you’re rubber stamping things you don’t understand, then you’re doing a bad job.
Explain the Big Short, shortly
You’re about 2500 words into my “short summary.” But the important things to remember:

Financial acronyms suck.
Money flowed from the investors down to the mortgage lenders, and the risk flowed from the mortgage lenders up to the investors. In between, the big banks and CDOs acted as middle men and intermediaries.
When someone feels like their actions have no risk, or no consequences, they’ll behave poorly (big banks, mortgage lenders)When someone is given what seems like an amazing deal, they’ll take it (individual home owners).
CDOs are like empty buckets. Mortgage payments are like rain, filling the buckets. Investors buy tranches, or slices, across all the buckets. If mortgages fail, then the buckets might not fill up, and the investors won’t get their money back.
CDOs are intentionally complex. So complex, that not even the people grading them understood what was going on (ratings agencies).
Buying insurance on something your do not own is a behavior with potential for abuse (big banks)
Buying insurance on something for more than it’s worth is a behavior with potential for abuse (big banks). This is where most of the money in the financial crisis switched hands.

And with that, I’d like to announce the opening of the Best Interest CDO. Rather than invest in mortgages, I’ll be investing in race horses. Don’t ask my why, but the current top stallion is named ‘Dog Shit.’ He’ll take Wall Street by storm.
If you don’t mind my cussing but you do like this content, consider subscribing to the email list to get these articles (and nothing more) sent to your inbox every week.
I hope this post helped if you were looking for someone to explain the Big Short. Thanks for reading the Best Interest.

Source: https://bestinterest.blog/explain-the-big-short/

Reminder: The Lakers sucked for a lot longer than the Process Sixers

I bet there's someone out there whose job is to binge on reddit and steal content for his company

I help someone get revenge on their gold-digging ass of an SO

This happened some years ago but was just reminded of it, so here you go Reddit!
I worked as a front desk agent in a large luxury hotel chain for some years. One particular hotel I worked at was located really close to the downtown area and so we got a large number of young, very wealthy, business people who loved to party. I usually worked the 2nd & 3rd shifts which meant I got to see loads of drunken hookups, breakups, cheating, hookers, and more.
This particular one though...this is one I will never forget.
I was working at the desk when a group of young, well-dressed men come walking in. They've all clearly been drinking, but aren't so drunk that they can't walk right and hold a conversation.
One of them comes up to me and tells me that while he and his friends were at the bar, a woman was hitting on him, and even though he told her no multiple times she wouldn't stop. So he and his friends left and it wasn't until they got in the Uber that he realized he didn't have his room key anymore. He thinks she took it and he's concerned that she may come up to his room, he asked that I deactivate his keys and if she does come up to the hotel to not let her in.
When he was telling me all of this, it didn't sit right with me. He and his friends were all grinning about it and snickering amongst one another. Then he gave a clear description of her, without being asked. Told me height, body shape, hair color, and style, the kind of dress she was wearing. All while saying it in a mocking tone.
Now, this could have easily been because he thought the whole thing was ridiculous or was too drunk to take it seriously, but it really didn't sound right to me. Either way, I did as I was trained in that situation. I pulled up his reservation, deactivated the keys as requested, made him a new set when he showed me his ID, and even offered to move him to a new room if that would make him feel more comfortable. He and his buddies all laughed a little at that and he declined, took the keys and they went to their room.
About an hour or so later, the woman he described showed up. Now, by this point, my relief for the night had also shown up and was sitting at the front desk while I was in the back office counting down my cash drawer. I hadn't had a chance to tell him about the woman. Just as I'm walking out of the back office with my bag and about to leave, I see my coworker buzz the doors open and the woman comes rushing in, cuts through the lobby and down the hall to the elevators. She was barefoot, holding her heels in her hands, and knew exactly where she was going.
I rushed up to him and told him what the man from before had told me about her. My coworker looked at me confused. He then pointed to the screen that had the reservation pulled up and told me that when the woman arrived, she went to use the room keys and they didn't work. So he asked for her room number and last name, she gave both and her name is on the reservation. I looked at the reservation and down in the notes, there was a woman's name listed. The man from before was listed as the primary, but her name was listed as secondary with his consent to be in the room.
I was confused, I thought maybe she wasn't the same woman he was talking about. But, to be on the safe side I called the man in his room and told him the situation and that we allowed a woman, fitting that description he gave, to enter the building because she confirmed her name was on the room. He laughed, said he forgot her name was on the room and asked that I remove it. I was now super confused, I asked to make sure:
Me: "Sir...just to be clear, the woman you met at the bar tonight was with you at check-in hours ago and was allowed keys then, but now she is not?"
Him: (laughs to all his friends in the room) "Awww....guys I confused the poor girl." (gets back on the phone with me) "Yeah sweetheart, she's banned from the room. Don't worry about the other details, just take her name off."
Me: "...I see. Then, if she isn't going to be on the room anymore, would you like us to call the police and have her removed from the property?"
Him: "Hahaha...woah! That's too far there. Don't worry, she'll get the hint soon enough."
We ended the call there and I got really suspicious of this. I told my coworker to not do anything and that I was going to stick around for a bit to see if anything happened.
A short time later the woman came off the elevator, pouring tears, sobbing while on the phone with someone. She sat down in our lobby and my coworker and I tried to look busy while eavesdropping hard on her phone call.
She was sobbing on the phone to her mom and sister. From what she told them, she was invited out to spend the week with her boyfriend meeting all of his old college buddies. This being their first-night they all met up for dinner and drinks. After a bit, she went to the restroom and when she came back she caught her boyfriend hitting on another woman. His friends all bet that he wouldn't do it. When she confronted him pissed off, he called her a bunch of names and humiliated her in front of his friends and the entire bar. All of his friends joined in on mocking her and he threw in her face that she was "nothing without him" and dumped her right there. He and his friends then took an Uber back and left her stranded at the bar with no money and no way back. She then had to use her phone's GPS and walk back to the hotel from the bar, barefoot (she had heels, and walking 2 miles in those was not going to cut it). She was asking her mom and sister for help as he wouldn't let her in the room to get her luggage or her wallet.
My heart broke. I felt horrible. I helped this guy treat this poor woman like crap and now he and all his friends were up there laughing at her while she's sitting in our lobby sobbing and with nothing. I went over to our snacks area in the lobby, grabbed her a bottled water, and brought it to her. I told her that I couldn't help but overhear the conversation and was very sorry for her situation and asked if she would like us to help. I informed her that if he was keeping her from getting to her things, we could call the police and have them force him to hand over her things so she could leave if she'd like. Or if she wanted to let her mom or sister pay for a room we'd be happy to give her a very low rate in a room far from him.
She thanked me, took the water, and tried to calm down and talk to me about what all was happening and what her options were. Eventually, we decided on her staying in the hotel for the night and figuring out the rest in the morning. As we make it to the desk, she asks me to try and run her credit card to see if it has enough on it for another room. I ask her what she means by "another room" and she tells me that she's actually paying for the room he's in. That his name is on the room because he booked it, but it's her card paying for everything.
This intrigued me. I asked why she was paying for the room if it was in his name. She told me that she's the one with a job, not him. That he hasn't been able to find a job in his field since graduating from college and is essentially living off of his parents' money. But just after they started dating, his parents cut him off, so he's been living off of her money. That's why she was so upset and confused by how he had been acting all night, he was sweet and doing everything for her back home, but since he met up with his friends he did a 180 and hasn't been the same guy the entire time.
I wanted to tell her that it was obvious he was using her for the money and that he would probably blame his friends for all of this and try to get back with her later on. But I doubted she would have listened to me or cared for a complete stranger to butt in on her personal life like that. So instead, I offered up a sweet piece of revenge.
I informed her that, considering she's the one paying for the room, if she can confirm that it is her card on file with some sort of photo ID and verify the last 4 digits of the card number (That's honestly all this hotel company required) then she could, if she wanted to, kick him out of the room and keep it all to herself. But, considering how poorly her night has been, if she were indeed able to prove she is the one paying for the room, then I'd be more than happy to provide for her the biggest luxury upgrade we offered at our property. Largest suite we had, full hotel ammenity access, I'd even have my coworker fish out a bottle of champagne and some fresh strawberries for her to have sent to her room. All free of charge.
She was taken aback by the offer and was very sincerely tempted, she looked like she was about to say no. Then I told her that since she would be upgrading her room, that would require moving her things from that room and into her new one. Which mean the room that she is currently listed in would need to be vacated immediately, if anyone were to remain in the room after we have demanded it be vacated, we are required to have them escorted off the property or they pay for the room. Their choice.
She then thought about it, pulled up her card's banking app and showed me the screen. It had a photo of her, her full name, the card's full number, and the hold from our hotel for the room. She asked if that worked. It was good enough for me.
I quickly upgraded her, moved everything over in the system and before I could say a word to my coworker he was already grabbing a set of master keys, a bell cart and was asking her what her luggage looked like since he would be the one retrieving it for her to deliver to her room. He didn't want her to have to deal with her ex again. She smiled and told him which ones were hers and that she hadn't unpacked yet.
My coworker runs down to the elevators and up to fetch her things. While I make her a new set of keys and send her off to her new room. Once she's on the elevator, my phone at the desk starts ringing. It's the ex-boyfriend and he's very angry about why my coworker has entered the room and is taking her things. I calmly explain that I cannot give out the private information of any of our guests and that if he would like to remain in his room he will need to pay for it as there is no longer a method of payment on his room.
He. Blew. Up.
He's making a ton of demands and at the same time yelling at my coworker to stop what he's doing, but its obvious from the way he's yelling at him that my coworker isn't listening to him. I can even hear the guy's friends telling him to chill out and just pay for the room.
I then explain that we will give him a courtesy 10 mins to make a decision. At which point, if he doesn't have payment ready then he must vacate the building or we will be forced to call the authorities and have him evicted. He continues to yell at me. He screams, swears, threatens, and yells for a solid minute before taking a breath. I then tell him he has 9 mins remaining and asks if he has come to a decision yet. He hangs up on me.
9 minutes later I call the room and he doesn't answer. I call again, no answer. I call a third time, he picks up, then immediately hangs up. I call the police and tell them what's going on and they said they're on their way.
The officers arrive, I tell them what's going on, we go up to the room together and the man and his friends are all white as ghosts when they see the cops. The cops explain to the ex-boyfriend and his friends that they're being evicted. The ex-bf starts trying to talk to me but the cops stop him and tell him to only talk to them (I told him about his attitude on the phone before). The friends are all offering to pay for the room at this point and the cops look to me and ask if that would be acceptable. I smile very sweetly and say "no" and the cops nod and start rushing all of the guys to grab their things and leave the room. The ex-bf is the last one out the door carrying his 2 bags and complaining that he isn't even given a luggage cart and has to carry his own things. His friends all look pissed at him.
I go with the officers to escort all of them out of the building and run into my coworker in the lobby. He waits until they're all outside in the parking lot to tell me that the woman is in her new room, loves it, and said no to the champagne, she just wanted to sleep.
I didn't get to see her before she left town the next day, but the ex-bf did try calling our hotel to complain a number of times and even tried leaving some bad reviews of us online and lied through all of it. I hope she doesn't have to ever deal with him again.
Edit: Thank you all so much for the awards! It's only been 1 day and I'm blown away by how much this story was loved! I normally do post my hotel stories to talesfromthefrontdesk but felt that this one would work here too so I posted it here first. Glad I did and I plan to repost there as well. Thank you all again for the love! I have a lot of asshole stories from working in that industry, very few wholesome stories, but this is my one and only revenge story. So really happy you all loved it! Thank you!
Edit 2: Wanted to address some things you guys brought up in the comments:

I have no idea why she didn't use Uber instead of walking, probably due to the distress of the moment and didn't think of it. Honestly, if you're ever in that situation, despite being publicly humiliated like that, ask the staff for help. Either they think of something you're too panicked to think of or they'll be nice and pay for an uber for you. I've done it for people plenty when working in hotels. There's no shame in asking for help.
The credit card company is Capital One. I wasn't going to mention it since some subs immediately flag your story for listing major company names and didn't want to fuss with that. But yeah, their app lets you post a picture on your profile and, on most banking and credit card apps, you are able to pull up the full card number by clicking on the account information. Yes, technically I shouldn't have accepted this as a form of ID however, given how shit her night was, I didn't care.

CD Projekt Red breaks their promise on not putting their developers on crunch for Cyberpunk 2077, r/pcgaming discusses whether the employees are being exploited or are being babies.

How I applied Buffet's strategies to my own portfolio, +70% networth, beat SP500 by 40%

I believe I did pretty well in the market this year. My networth increased ~65% since its lowest point in March, ~350k to 620k. 20k from the car I bought in March. I rolled over a 401k and it messed up Mint's reporting, hence the spike from Jul -> Aug.
I beat the SP500 by 40% in my YOLO account, my FAANG account went from 180->300
I did this by following some basic investing principles, buying and holding for the most part, being patient, and only investing in areas which I have expertise in.
I did not buy into the TSLA hype, nor do I play options, nor do I play crypto.

High level advice:

I picked the 7 I agree with.

Invest in what you know…and nothing more.
Never compromise on business quality
When you buy a stock, plan to hold it forever
Diversification can be dangerous
Most news is noise, not news (don't read articles about investing)
The best moves are usually boring (buy and hold)
Only listen to those you know and trust

I firmly believe that anyone who follows those concepts, they will find success in investing.

General mindset:

Keep emotions out of the market
Don't bother timing the market. Don't get ruled by FOMO.
Understand that for some stocks, you can't really average cost down. You will have to stomach buying the stock at a higher entry point. My refusal to average up early on caused me to miss out on a lot of gains.
Understand the difference between trading, investing, and gambling.
Have an exit strategy (stop losses would have helped me a lot in March, I now learned from my expensive mistake)
Be greedy-- not TOO greedy. If a stock pops 10%, I will sell half to lock in profits. It's super common to see a lot of companies pop and the next day dip a bit due to sell off. Perfect time to grab more on the dip. This is obviously impossible to time, which is why I only sell half.

Application:

I was very specific in the types of companies I would choose to invest in within tech. I decided to follow my strengths. As a data engineer, I'm very intimate with cloud technologies, and I think I generally have pretty sharp business acumen and good strategic direction.
As a result, my day to day work had me using a ton of technologies in the cloud space. I've used Splunk, NewRelic, Twilio, AWS, GCP, Hortonworks/Cloudera, Oracle, Tableau, Datadog, Sendgrid (bought by Twilio), Dropbox/box, Slack, Salesforce, Marketo, Databricks, Snowflake, HP Vertica, just to name a few. I was familiar with CDN services like Fastly and Cloudflare because sometimes, I worked with the DevOps and IT guys.
Based on industry hearsay, day to day work, eventually, I got a good "feel" of what technologies were widely adopted, easy to use, and had a good reputation in the industry. Similarly, I also got a feel for what tech were being considered 'dated' or not widely used (HP, Oracle, Cloudera, Dropbox, Box).
I tend to shy away from companies that I don't understand. In the past, most times I've done that-- I got burned. My biggest losers this year was betting on $NAT and $JMNA (10k total loss). After learning from those mistakes, I decided to only focus on investing in companies that either I or my peers have intimate first hand experience with using. Because of this rationale, the majority of stocks in my portfolio are products which I believe in, I thoroughly enjoy using, and I would recommend to my friends, family, and colleagues.
Post COVID, due to the shift to remote work and increase in online shopping I decided to double down on tech. I already knew that eCommerce was the next big thing. I made very early investments into SHOP and Amazon in 2017 for that reason.
My hypothesis was that post-COVID, the shift on increased online activity, remote work, and eCommerce would mean that companies which build tools to support increased online activity should also increase. I decided to choose three sectors within tech to narrow down-- these were three sectors that I had a good understanding of, due to the nature of my work and personal habits.

eCommerce + AdTech
IT/DevOps (increased online activity means higher need for infra)
FinTech (increased shopping activity means more transactions)

These are the points I consider before I consider jumping into a stock:

Do I feel good about using the company? Do I believe in the company's vision?
Where do I see this company in 5 years? 10 years? Do I see my potential children being around to use these companies?
What does YoY, QoQ growth look like for this company?
Is/Will this product be a core part of how businesses or people operate?
Who are their customers and target demographic?
(SaaS) Customer testimonials, white papers, case studies. If it's for a technology, I'm going to want to read a paper or use case.

In March, I took what I believe to be an "educated gamble". When the market crashed, I liquefied most of my non tech assets and reinvested them into tech. Some of the holdings I already had, some holdings were newly purchased.
EDIT ^{^{^}} this isn't called timing the market you /wsb imbeciles. Timing the market would be trying to figure out when to PULL OUT during ATH and then buying the dip. I SOLD at the lowest point, and I with the cash I sold AT A LOSS, I reinvested that cash and doubled down into tech. If I sold in Feb, and bought back in March, that would be calling timing the market. What I am doing is called REINVESTING/REBALANCING... not timing the market.
I have 50% of my networth in AMZN, MSFT, AAPL, GOOG, FB, NFLX, and the rest in individual securities/mutual funds. I have 3 shares of TSLA that I got in @1.5.
Here are the non FAANGs I chose.

$SQ. I had already been invested in SQ since 2016. I made several bad trades, holding when it first blew past 90 until I sold it at 70... bought in again last year at 60s, after noticing that more and more B&M stores were getting rid of their clunky POS systems and replacing it with Square's physical readers. After COVID, I noticed a lot of pop up vendors, restaurants doing take out. A Square reader made transactions very easy to make post-COVID.
$ATVI. Call of Duty and Candy Crush print money for them. I've been a Blizzard fanboy since I was a kid, so I have to keep this just out of principle.
$SHOP. They turned a profit this year, and I think there is still a lot more room to grow. It's become somewhat of a household name. I've met quite a few people who mentioned that they have a Shopify site set up to do their side hustle. I've tried the product myself, and can definitely attest that it's pretty easy to get an online shop up and running within a day. I 5.5xed my return here.
$BIGC. I bought into this shortly after IPO. I'm very excited to see an American Shopify. BigC focuses on enterprise customers right now, and Shopify independent merchants, so I don't see them directly competing. I'm self aware this is essentially a gamble. I got in at 90, sold at 140, and added more in 120s. I def got lucky here... it's not common for IPOs to pop so suddenly. I honestly wasn't expecting it to pop so soon.
$OKTA. Best in class SSO tool. Amazing tool that keeps tracks of all of my sign-ons at work.
$DDOG. Great monitoring tool. Widely adopted and good recommendations throughout the industry. Always had a nice looking booth at GoogleNext.
$ZM. Zoom was the only video conf tool at work which I had a good time using. Adoption had blown up pre-COVID already in the tech world, and post-COVID, they somehow became a noun. "Zoom parties" and "Zoom dates" somehow became a thing interwoven into peoples' day to day lives.
$TWLO. Twilio sells APIs which allow applications to send messages like text, voice, and video chat. For example, when DoorDash sends you a text at 1 AM reminding you that your bad decision has arrived, that text is powered by Twilio. In March, New York announced that they were going to use Twilio to send SMS notifs for COVID contact tracing.
$NET/$FSTY. These two two seem like the ones best poised for growth in the CDN space. This is based off of industry exposure and chatting with people who work in DevOps.
$DOCU. people aren't going to office to sign stuff, super easy to use, I like their product.
$WMT. eComm, streaming, and a very substantial engineering investment makes me think they have room to grow. Also I really need to diversify.
$COST. When is the last time you heard someone say "Man I hate going to Costco and paying $1.50 for a hotdog and soda?" Diversification. Also cheap hotdogs.
$NVDA/AMD. GPUs are the present and the future. Not only are they used for video games, but Machine Learning now uses GPU instead of CPU to do compute (Tensorflow for example). Crypto is still a thing as well, and there will always been a constant need for GPUs.

Mutual funds/ETFs 1. $FSCSX. MF which focuses on FinTech.

$VTSAX Pretty much moves with the SP500.
$WCLD. Holdings include Salesforce, Workday, Zuora, Atlassian, Okta, New Relic, Fastly...

Titanvest: I was an early access user, and I was able to secure 0% fees for my accout. 36% gains so far. I like them, because their portfolio happens to include shares of tech giants that I either don't have individual stocks for or my stake is low (CRM, PPYL). It nicely complements my existing portfolio.

Some things I do that that are against the grain:

Not really diversified. 80% is in tech. They are in very different sectors of tech, but the truth is, when tech falls, all of these companies fall. I'm obviously long tech and I do not believe that tech will fall anytime soon. What about the dot com bubble? There wasn't a single dot com company that was integral in our lives. The internet was in its infancy then. Techonology is now such an interwoven part of our lives and I see companies like Apple, Amazon, Google to be sticking around for several generations.
I don't read investing articles. I think people who write articles about a stock all have ulterior motives-- to pump or to dump. Case in point-- Citron Research spent years writing articles telling people how SHOP was overvalued. Why did they do that? Because they were shorters at the time. I turned 5k into 27k, because I held on to most of my SHOP shares.
I don't take much value from balance sheets, other than net loss, income, YoY growth. Instead, I use my business acumen to try to pick up on info that isn't super apparent from Google. For example, one thing I always do is that I look at the career page to see how the business is growing. Increase on marketing/sales/implementation engineers is typically a solid sign that a company is preparing headcount to take new deals in the upcoming quarters. I look at the product road map, supported integrations, and customer base.

One example was how I applied the above principle was to WalMart. In 2018 I noticed that I was getting targeted by a lot of Data engineering job listing for WalMartLabs-- WarMart's tech division. The role was to build out a big data pipeline to support their eCommerce platform. WalMart's online store released in Q3 of 2019. Post COVID, I used their online store and it was a seamless experience. They even offer a 5% cash back card like Amazon. They reported strong Q4 sales last year, and they did very well post COVID. Why did I choose to invest in $WMT? Because I believe that Wal-Mart has room to grow for their online platform.
Lastly... remember that wealth isn't accrued over time. It takes years to build. The quickest way to increase your wealth is by investing in yourself-- your career and earning potential. The sooner my income increased, the quicker I had more capital to buy into stocks.
Also, if you've gotten this far, the point of my post isn't to say that you should invest into tech. The message I'm trying to get across is-- when picking companies, pick companies in fields or verticals you have good knowledge in. Heed Buffet's advice to only pick companies you believe in and understand. Play to your strengths, don't mindless toss money based on one person's posts on Reddit-- always do your own due diligence. Use DD as a guide and use personal research and experience to drive your decision.

Michael Dugher: To be clear I was in Labour because I grew up in a working class pit village. I spent 20 years working for Labour in govt (where we did great things) & Parliament. I was never a cheerleader for Corbynism that poisoned Labour with anti-Jewish racism & gave the Tories a landslide.

"No one is above the rules, and I mean no one call me if he pulls rank"

I used to work for a marketing company that serviced small and medium-sized businesses across America. It was a multi-billion dollar revenue company. The CEO was a true rags to riches story. He joined the company right after he got out of jail in his early 20s for a small drug charge and worked his way up over 20 years to eventually become the CEO of the company.
The CEO strongly believed that the success of the company did not come from the brilliant and intelligent minds that he hired for his executive team, but the hard work, sweat and tears of the infield sales reps, service reps (made sure the customer services where properly installed), collection reps (chased after customers who fell behind on their payments), and sales managers.
He would often say, without sales we don't have the revenue to pay your salaries
Without customer service customers will drop us faster then we can bill them
Without collection reps we'd lose too many accounts due to non-payment
And without sales managers to hold it all together we'd fall apart
And he had a rule
EVERY SINGLE EXECUTIVE team member would spend 1 full week of each quarter in the field with a Sales Manager, Customer Service Rep, Collections Rep, or Sales rep. In addition when they are in the field they are to SUBMIT to whoever they've been assigned too and they may not pull rank.
This rule applied to EVERYONE to include the CEO. I know this, cause the CEO personally road along with me for 5 days in the field. He was a legit cool guy (I got a story at the end about this)
So...apparently we had hired a new VP Of Marketing from a major brand that I'm sure everyone in this sub would know of. Anyway apparently the first time he went in the field the VP Of Marketing pulled rank on a sales manager and the sales manager reported this directly to the CEO.
A new quarter went by, and I got an email stating that the VP Of Marketing will be joining me in the field on such and such week. Ok cool, not the first time I had some higher up come out and ride with me.
But about an hour later I got a call from my CEO.
CEO: PJ the VP Of Marketing is going in the field with you
Me: Yes sir, I got the email...
CEO: PJ I picked you cause when I was in the field with you, you seemed like the kinda guy that wouldn't be bullied or let someone run all over you
Me: Ok, well thank you
CEO: This VP is new to the company, and the last time he went in the field he pulled rank. I've told him not to pull rank again, and if he does I want you to call me as soon as you can.
PJ: I understand
CEO: Thank you
The VP meets me up, honestly for the first two days everything was fine. However on the 3rd day I was meeting with an existing client. This client was a difficult to please customer, he would always say we weren't worth the money, but I knew we were cause I could see his results, and over the years this clients business had grown alot. Said client would beat us up over pricing I'd stand firm, give him a 3% price increase, and offer him upgrades on top he'd haggle me down to a 1.5% price increase and we'd sign the contract.
Now I told the VP what would happen, that it would be a long sales call, and a difficult high tense one. But to let me handle it, I've dealt with the client quite a bit and was well prepared.
Now this meeting with the client lasted 2 1/2 hours but I'll get to the point. The client wanted a discount and was threatening to go to our competitor, he wouldn't. That's when the VP spoke up and said "I'm the VP and I'll personally give you a 15% discount on your current plan if you agree to sign a 1 yr contract" the customer said "20%" the VP said "Spilt the difference 17.5% and we have a deal" they agreed I was mad as hell.
One thing to mention my commissions depended on me generating MORE REVENUE and this VP just fucked me over.
We get in my car, and I go "You pulled rank you shouldn't have done that" he said "I got the deal done" I said "Had you kept your mouth shut I'd have gotten more money, not given 20% back" he goes "We got the contract signed" I said "We gave away tens of thousands of dollars that we didn't need to" he goes "Look I'm the VP..."
I then called my CEO, he saw the name pop up on my cars bluetooth
CEO answered
CEO: PJ, how are you doing?
PJ: The VP pulled rank on me and gave my customer a 17.5% discount on his current plan right as I was about to close him for more money
CEO: That's not right, where is the VP?
PJ: Your on speaker, he can hear you
CEO: Excellent, hey VP
VP: Yes sir
CEO: Tell me what happend
VP: Told his side of the story, which he admitted the truth but also admitted to pulling rank and giving the customer a discount
CEO: Ok, thanks for your honesty. Your fired.
VP: Excuse me?
CEO: Your fired, you have a 1 yr probation clause your done you don't pull rank when in the field
VP: You can't do this
CEO: I just did, you are to get on a plane come back to your office and clean it out, PJ take Mr. VP back to his hotel and drop him off.
PJ: Sure, no problem
And for the next 20 minutes I had an awkward car ride back to my former VPs hotel.
Later in a all hands on meeting, the CEO made sure to talk about how if an executive is in the field and pulls rank its a firable offense for the executive and he wants all the sales reps, sales managers, customer service reps, and collection reps to know that.
Side Story on this CEO
The company had a data plan, which gave us 4G on our Ipads, Phones, and Laptops. Well the company changed the service plan, and our data plan went down to ONLY our phones and we had to hotspot off that. They said this move would save us $80,000 a month (we had like 4,000~ employees in the field)
Well 2 months later we had a conference (we had 3 conferences a year) and after the conference, everyone went to the hotel bar. That's when I approached my CEO with another sales rep and talked to him about how much of a PITA it was to hotspot all our devices and how much it drained our phone batteries and blah blah and that I get it saves money, but it also costs producitiy.
The CEO nodded and said "Tell you what, in 2 weeks the CIO is supposed to go in the field, I'll have him to go in the field with you and if he agrees that its costing our reps productivity and causing to many workflow issues I'll bring back 4G data to all devices
The CIO was there and said "CIO, your going to XYZ area and you will be riding with PJ, pay attention to how he uses his 4G data and if you think we should go back to the old plan where all devices had 4G"
The CIO went into the field with me, on the 3rd day at breakfast he said "Last night I called the CEO" and I said "yea?" and he said "I made a recommendation that we go back to our old data plan and ensure all your devices have 4G data, its obviously creating productivity issues and when you look at the cost per user, its not that great" FAQ
Do you still work there? If so why not?
No I do not work there I was much better at maintaining and growing existing clients than acquiring new ones. The company ended up buying another company and started laying people off, and made acquiring new business more important then maintaining the current business meaning I was going be let go so I quit and switched jobs before ethey fired me.
Sounds like a great CEO/he's what I wish all CEOs would be comments
He's still a ruthless business person, I'll give you an example of what he did to a lot of managers. When he bought out his competitor. He had a lot of redundancy and a lot of managers on rock-solid employment contracts which he couldn't just "lay off" so he took the managers with those contracts and turned them into phone reps. Imagine being a sales manager or even a VP and getting a call and being told you are no longer a manager or a VP and your demoted, not even an outside sales rep but an inside phone rep.
Those managers obviously didn't perform very well after being demoted and would be written up for poor performance and let go. I know of a VP in the company who was demoted to a phone rep position. And literally got written up for poor performance for his first month. O and he was still getting his VP salary (per the contract, they could change his position/duties but they could not pay him less and the only way they could fire him would be through poor performance)
Also another thing he did, he invested a lot in automation during this time so he could lay off even more people. I had a talk with my manager one day, and he said the CEO was obsessed with revenue/per employee number and was determined to drive that number up.
I want to work for them, can give me the company name/etc
No, for two reasons
First reason, the company is currently not hiring and actively laying people off. Their primary revenue comes from small, and medium-sized businesses. As you can imagine due to the economic circumstance those small businesses can no longer afford to pay their bills, which includes my former employer. As a result, they've had to downsize. I'm sure the company will survive, they had crazy healthy margins, and I heard right before the economic downfall they had a lot of cash on hand for another acquisition of some competitors which they didn't go through with cause I bet they are using that cash to survive.
Secondly, I don't want to be doxxed.
What's my opinion of this CEO
Honestly nothing but fucking respect. The dude is inspiring. He is also not someone I would not want to be, he's an obvious work alcoholic, his personal net worth is in excess of $100+ million and he doesn't need to work ever again but according to all the VPs/Managers I spoke to the dude literally works 7 days a week at all hours of the day.
Put it this way, he travels SO MUCH in his biggest markets he keeps a car that he bought since its cheaper then buying a rental everytime he flys in
What did I take away from my time with them?
Honestly, I think a lot of companies could learn a lot from this company. Seriously why more companies don't force their top leadership to work within the ranks on a regular basis is beyond me. Its one gripe I have with my current employer.
This is how he reduced his sales staff
When he bought out the competitor he removed all sales objectives. He then made maintaining current/growing current client worth 1x he made acquiring new clients worth 5x. Also losing revenue cost you 1.5x Everyone was ranked against everyone, and he placed everyone in quadrants if you fell in the bottom 25% for 2 months in a row you got laid off.
And this created for some interesting results. Example I had a family emergency. I took off for one week. For that one week I did $0 in business. however because people who were ranked ABOVE me lost revenue I rose in ranking. And the first week I came back I closed on a new business, increased revenue, and fell in rank because others around me did more.
It created for some depressing performance reviews, a co-worker of mine closed decent sized new business and he thought for sure that'd save his job. It didn't, because another person sold more then he did, and it kept him in the bottom 25% and he was fired. Thursday evening he was so excited about his new account, thinking it saved his job. Friday afternoon he let go.

Protesters set up guillotine outside of Jeff Bezos’ DC home

Hey hey, reposting my 45+ Productivity, Life, and Self Improvement tactics - enjoy

Hey hey, ladies and gents, I posted this on productivity and it got removed without an explanation, might have been the fact that it’s a list. But still, use this as a database, it’ll really help!
I spend dozens of hours every week researching, writing, and re-writing this type of content and making sure everyone that supports me gets exactly the kind of content they deserve. It's my job at this point.
This database/list is a Reddit first, but I'm publishing a categorized version in this week's premium email, I'm also creating a searchable database that I'll be inviting subscribers to.
I hope you enjoy this, some might sound as basic as they come but let me tell you, they help immensely.
If you want more from me, my email list which is free/paid whatever floats your goal, is on my profile.
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1. Try sleeping at the same time every night.

This habit enables you to fall asleep faster and wake up at the same time, like clockwork, all subconsciously.
Your body clock and circadian rhythms control hormones such as melatonin. Sleeping at the same time every night is one of the queues for your body to start secreting melatonin - this is why you subconsciously get tired and start yawning at a particular time when you have a routine.
There’s much more to sleep and body clock queues here.

2. Do the most challenging thing first.

This could be at the start of your day, the beginning of a project, or your study session’s first hour. After completing this task, you’ll have not only done something meaningful with your day, but you’ll feel the momentum carry through to other todo items.

3. Replace recurring decisions with routines.

Every decision you make throughout the day comes with a tiny mental tax. When you add it all up, you start performing worse at the choices that matter. So eliminate picking an outfit, deciding on breakfast, or figuring out when to workout - replace them all with a routine.
The faster you commit to pre-selecting a schedule and sticking to it, the more mentally precise and swift you’ll be when you make decisions.

4. Keep airplane mode on for the first two hours of the day.

Make the morning yours, get acquainted with how you feel, and take control of your time before others try to compete for it.

5. Avoid starting and stopping to eliminate your overhead.

When you stop a task to answer an email, help someone, or check notifications, you disrupt or altogether avoid deep work. Instead, designate a time to deal with all the ‘admin’ stuff on your schedule, not someone else’s.

6. Check external solutions to your problem before inventing a new one.

There’s a high chance that the problems you have in your work, code, studies, gym routine, etc. have been repeated.
If you’re messing up an exercise, ask the staff or check out a tutorial. Before doing some crazy code gymnastics, check out some forums. Before drafting a reporting template, see if the company already has a standard.

7. Asking is sometimes all you need to do to create your own options, uncover solutions, and learn.

We always hear, “If you never ask, the answer is always no.” So ask for a little extra, ask for an alternative, an exception, the dumb question. If you don’t ask, you won’t know and won’t receive it. A lot of the time, asking has a massive upside with almost no downside.
We don’t ask most of the time because we don’t want to be a bother - but the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Another reason goes deep into cognitive biases; loss aversion, and mastering it will help in every aspect of life.

8. Write down your mistakes and lessons learned.

We almost always repeat our mistakes; it’s too hard to remember the lessons we thought we learned. Writing them down and revisiting them helps us etch them into our memory, but doing this haphazardly isn’t as effective as systematically.
A terrific strategy is to put together a rule book or set of principles that you can always refer back to when you’re in doubt. If you can do this, it’ll be worth your time.

9. Design your environment to serve you.

Cleaning your office, eliminating distractions, getting rid of bad influences, surrounding yourself with like-minded people; these are all environment choices. Designing your environment to push yourself in the direction you desire will have a disproportionately positive effect on your success.
The essential strategy here is to reduce friction within your surroundings, and sometimes it's not so obvious - ask yourself, “What’s something that gets in my way when I’m working?” and “Can I get rid of or manage it?”

10. Identify the credible people around you.

It’s hard to decipher constructive criticism from noise. If you create a list, even a mental one, of the people who matter in their feedback, you’ll have a much easier time trusting opinions without having doubts about the quality.

11. Be aware of your mental state when making decisions.

Something as trivial as being hungry can make your emotions play a much larger role ina logical decision. Reminding ourselves and being aware of our mental state can delay making decisions until we’re better equipped to handle it.

12. Making life easier for other people makes yours easier too.

Make your customers' life easier; be rewarded with repeat customers. Make your professor's life easier; be rewarded with higher marks. Make your manager’s life easier; get promoted.

13. The right type of meditation makes all the difference.

Mindfulness, spiritual, transcendental; all that matters is that it works for you.
Yours might be going for a run and exercising focus, or having a coffee in silence while being aware of your surroundings.
Any time you take for yourself and exercise doing practically nothing, noticing when a thought comes, acknowledging it, and moving on is meditation.

14. If it takes less than a few minutes to do, just do it.

We procrastinate on many small things until they combine to become an actual problem. So doing them in the moment is the perfect way to avoid the big one.
This rule doesn’t mean disrupting deep work; that’s a form of procrastination in itself. It means that when you aren’t, you can bundle a few tasks together and be done with it in less than 10–15 minutes.
Dishes out of the dishwasher, bed made, floor swept, call returned. It’s easy and will leave a clean mental state for future you.

15. Put schedules next to your to-do list items.

This will allow you to complete the tasks, and maybe not right away, but soon enough, you’ll start to realize how many items are appropriate. Say goodbye to the endless list that’s never complete.

16. Have an overarching goal for the day.

Each night, write a single goal for the next day. If you complete this, it was a successful day.

17. When reading self-help books, case studies, papers, and biographies have a pen and notepad with you.

Underlines, notes, important chapters, paragraphs you’ve read for the 5th time, and notes that are thicker than the sections they were written about — this is how you learn.
Taking this much time and care may be the same time it takes someone else to read three books, but I’m betting you’ll come out more knowledgeable. Quality > Quantity.

18. Actively listen to the person when you’re talking to them

Ego is something everyone wrestles with because we’re inherently the center of our universe. Listening is such an immense exercise in focus, learning, and empathy that your ego level almost drops to zero.
Too many people wait for their turn to talk instead of listening. You can avoid so much miscommunication by doing this, and you’ll be better for it. This also goes for reading emails and texts.

19. Spend time refining your diet.

The level of improvement in thinking, decision-making, fitness, and productivity has significant ties with what you put in your body. This isn’t some trivial point, either.
The classic example is sugar and caffeine’s effects on performance. Protein supplements and healthy fats, an appropriate amount of carbs, all of this preparation helps. It’s likely not a placebo when someone is raving about how great they feel after switching up their diet.

20. Thank people for their hard work and acknowledge their efforts.

This costs you nothing and gives you all the benefits you could hope for. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it will enhance the collective productivity and morale in your social circles, groups, projects, teams, and companies.

21. Learn to delegate and automate.

Think about a task that you often do. Do you need to be doing it? Can you put in some investment of time or money to get rid of the job forever? Does that investment pay off?
Answering these questions will allow you to examine if it's viable to delegate or automate a routine.
Technical automation by using Zapier, Google Sheets, and other apps can be inexpensive or free. Delegating tasks by hiring the right people might win you back countless hours of your own time.
Identify. Assess. Execute.

22. Get the sleeping hours that work for you.

Don’t listen to the overworking ‘hustle’ crowd. You can get a full night's sleep and still be working hard and smart.
Your hours will yield a much higher return if you’re well-rested and switched on. So whether you need nine hours or six, do it without guilt, and plan around it for significant productivity.

23. Use the 3-second rule when you’re procrastinating.

Engage your fight or flight instinct by starting a task three seconds after realizing you’re procrastinating.
You count down from three, and once you get to zero, you just do the thing. There’s no question about it, no further dwelling, just action.
If you fail at this once, this rule will never work again. It’s a mental exercise and sounds trivial, nonsensical even, but it works.

24. Split up your regular week and blow off some steam.

It’s hard to keep the ‘go go go’ attitude sustainable, and if you’re in it for the long game, you need to have some time for play. But many people face extreme guilt when they take time off.
Don't see it as “not working,” look at it like a requirement for success and an essential ingredient for a content life, a part of the productivity cycle.
Take a Tuesday or Thursday night to do something fun, relaxing, or different. Learn to split up your week, so the days don’t melt into one.

25. Dress for the occasion.

Dressing to be productive or successful will put you in the mindset to do just that. It’s your uniform; it’s a signal to yourself that it’s time to work.
This is why we feel much more productive, dressed smartly than wearing what we’ve slept with and trying to get work done from the bed.

26. Split your work into chunks.

This helps with procrastination as well as organization. Massive projects and undertakings are often daunting and require more than willpower to tackle.
Splitting it up into chunks not only makes things more digestible, but it also gives you a sense of progress and momentum as you complete tasks.

27. Verbalize the problem.

If you’re struggling with a problem, talk it through with a friend, co-worker, or inanimate object. When you start explaining your situation, there’s a good chance that you’ll solve it.
Explaining something requires that you take out the jumbled thoughts in your head and string them together to make sense to a third party. Programmers call this Rubber Duck Debugging - explaining the issue to a rubber duck.

28. Bundle your social media distractions.

Similar to designating hours for tasks like emails. If you set a time in the day to consume Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, you’ll be less distracted by every notification that comes in.

29. Make your communications clear and concise.

Especially for emails, dot points are a lifesaver and allow people to decipher what you’re saying quickly. Beating around the bush or being overly kind never helps.
Conveying urgency, being firm and clear will help someone solve your query faster than going back and forth until the email chain is 30 emails long.

30. The first and last two hours of your day are prime learning hours.

This is especially useful for committing things to memory like speeches and presentations. Reading, writing, re-writing, and verbalizing the content right before and right after REM sleep reduces learning friction.

31. Practice things in the worst possible scenarios first.

If you have an exam, a presentation, or a sales pitch, practice in non-ideal scenarios.
Make sure you’re tired and in an auditorium with a lot of distractions when practicing your presentation. Or you replicate the exam conditions as much as possible when doing a test exam, i.e. try not to do it in your PJs while listening to Lo-Fi Hip Hop.

32. Ask yourself whether it’s time to switch up a habit.

The more successful we become, the more habits we need to adjust. It takes a few years into mild success before you realize that you’re spending time doing certain things when it’d be more efficient to pay for the service.
What habits have you kept for a long time that may need adjusting? You could be eating healthier than the cup ramen college days, or you might not like going out as much. Assessing will help you find out.

33. Try one-word speed readers for faster reading.

Speed reading for quick information is underrated - this might not be the best thing for retention and detail, but certainly for faster information transfer. Many speed reading apps show one word at a time on the screen, allowing you to focus - you set the speed.
A quick Google search should get you the right apps and extensions.

34. Prepare and bundle your weekly tasks instead of doing them in the moment.

Typical examples are meal prep, bulk ironing clothes, and even setting up your bag for the next day. Doing this reduces friction and bandwidth throughout your week, day, or morning.

35. If you want to do continuous work, switch up the ‘type’ of work, and add variety.

This is easier for some than others. Visual and design work is different from analytical work. Sitting down and looking at a screen is different from cleaning or going to the gym, and yet it’s all productive - this is also called productive procrastination.

36. Figure out what timing increments work for you.

Some people prefer to use the Pomodoro Technique to work between 25 minutes and 1.5 hours at a time and take a short break. Others will opt to work continuously and achieve a flow state. Both options work, but they depend on your preference.

37. Color code your apps for quick access.

Color coding may or may not be worth the time. Some people prefer using the search function for quick access. Though by color-coding, you can seamlessly swipe through pages and find the app you need. We’re visual creatures, and logos are more memorable than names.

38. Use The No 7s Rule

When trying to decide whether to say yes to something, it’s a fantastic strategy not to allow yourself to give it a 7/10 - because if it’s not a “Hell Yes!” It should be a “No.”
You’re either going to give it a six or below (barely passable), or an eight and above (exciting).

39. Only have 3 things on your todo list.

Less is more, and that’s because you can focus a lot easier. You’ll have a purpose in your day when you have a simple story - I need to get X, Y, and Z done, and that’s a win.

40. Flip a coin

It’s the easiest way to make a decision and not for reasons you think.
If you’re stuck between two options, flip the coin and commit within three seconds. What will happen is that the urgency will engage your gut, and you’ll go for the opportunity you wanted anyway.

41. Optimize light exposure to sleep like a baby.

This means light exposure through sunlight during the day and artificial light in the evening. You want a lot of sunlight and minimal unnatural light - this natural cycle is how the human body evolved, and following it will make sure you sleep very well.
This cycle is built up of Circadian Rhythms to make up what we call the body clock. And among other things, natural body processes like the day/light cycle will regulate melatonin.

42. Prolonged endurance training is the surest way to clear your mind and gain a natural high.

Runners High is a real thing. When you do similar aerobic exercises like cycling and swimming, you’ll activate a flood of antidepressants and euphoriants that are naturally produced in your brain - this enables you to clear your head and will put you in a meditative state without needing to meditate.

43. The best productivity app is either a simple note app or a physical notepad.

Less is more when it comes to taking notes, and if you write them, date them, and organize them without all the bells and whistles, you’re going to have a much better time.

44. If you’re having a bad day, zoom out.

If you take your typical day and give it 100% regardless of whether luck’s on your side or not, understand that it will even out.
Yesterday may have been a high, today might be a low, and tomorrow might be somewhere in between - but if you’re consistent, there’ll be an upward trend when you zoom out to a year or decade.

45. Learn the difference between maximizers and satisficers.

There are natural maximizers and natural satisfiers. The maximizers will consider every possible option, do their research, and perfect a decision with all available information. The satisficers will pick the first option that satisfies what they’re looking for.
Maximizers will often feel overwhelmed or overthink fundamental decisions, while satisfiers can get through them quickly.
But satisficers can sometimes make poor decisions on things they could have avoided if they did the research.
There’s a happy medium of knowing when to maximize and when to satisfy. Investment fund? Maximize. Takeout? Satisfy.
This is only really learned by trial and error, but ask yourself the question when you’re mulling over your next decision: Am I maximizing when I should be satisfying? Or vice versa.
Cheers,
That’s everything for now - if you want to subscribe to my email list, just check my profile :)

It is time to be honest about the WNBA

The NBA is the parent company to the WNBA, since there is no WNBAdiscussion I figured this would be the place to speak openly and honestly about the WNBA from a 15 year NBA fan's perspective.
For those unfamiliar with the origins of the WNBA the league was founded 24 years ago by the NBA under commissioner David Stern. The goal of this league was to get more women interested in basketball and to give Top-level American talent a place to play on the home front.
Good intentions and for the first 5 years of the WNBA's existence things were looking up, the league expanded from 8 teams in 1996 to 16 teams to start the 2002 season. Average attendance started at roughly 9000 per game in 1996, spiked to 11k per game in 1998 and declined back to 9k per game in 2002.
Therein lies the first issue with the WNBA, after 2002 the per game attendance numbers started a slow decline, so much so that by time 2010 rolled around many teams were relocated to smaller arenas or simply folded. There are now 12 teams in the WNBA and only 3 of the founding teams are in the same city. (4 founding teams folded and 1 was relocated 3 times)
The viewership and per-game attendance numbers were always low, people blame lack of marketing but if we're being honest almost every single person knows the WNBA exists. I believe that the main is reason is the general sports watching market is simply uninterested in professional women's basketball. Think about it, how many people do you know who watch the WNBA? Who buy the jerseys? or even go to WNBA games? (Pre-corona) I'm willing to bet that the number is quite low.
The majority of sports consumers are male and the WNBA was created to lure females into sport consumption. On paper the idea makes sense right? 50% of people don't really watch sports and most are female, why not try to and acquire that market? The problem is in reality women consume so many other types of media that the WNBA simply does not compare to. Social Media sites, YouTube and even the Kardashians have higher rates of engagement and support than the WNBA ever will. Adam Silver even revealed during this interview that they are frustrated that women are not showing up to the games. He also revealed that the WNBA is supported predominantly by older men.
The next problem is the biggest issue with the WNBA, there is a huge lack of entertainment value when you actually watch a game. Don't get me wrong, these women are phenomenal players and are fundamentally very very good. The problem is that biology is a bit of a motherfucker. Women cannot compare to men in terms of strength, acceleration or verticality. Think about a player like Gary Harris. His vertical leaping ability and hangtime in this play is absurd. Gary Harris is a solid player but he is no superstar player like Lisa Leslie or Candace Parker or even Brittany Griner. Yet those are the only 3 players in the WNBA to have dunked ever and none of them could jump like Harris can.
When you watch an NBA game there is always a chance to see a moment that captures our imaginations or even exceed them. Think about this play JR Smith of all people did something that looked incredible. The entire stadium got on its feet, you probably have chills from watching that play. That is the power of the NBA.
The WNBA suffers from a lack of athleticism compared to the NBA and unless we make serious strides in genetic engineering that gap will simply never be closed.
Now we have to talk about money, a touchy subject because the WNBA does not share it's financial data with the public. Adam Silver also admitted that the WNBA receives 12 million a year from the NBA as a stipend yet the league itself still loses 20 million a year on average since its founding. Now all this would be scary enough to look at if I was a member of the WNBPA but the strange thing is all the coverage on the financials of the league are about the wage-gap between the two leagues. Granted initially the WNBPA said they just wanted the same percentage of BRI (basketball related income) as the men's league (men's league gets 50%). However if your league takes in roughly 60 million a year in income and loses 20 million a year, why would you be entitled to the same percentage? Your labor is not generating profits even close to what a healthy professional league should be.
Even if you triple the WNBA salary cap does it make the league more watchable? As per my earlier arguments I believe the answer is no.
Most WNBA players actually play overseas during the offseason in Eastern Europe and earn up to triple their WNBA income. Which begs the question why even come back? Just play in Europe make your money and rest during the regular WNBA season.
If you were a software engineer in Ohio and you got offered triple your salary to work in Poland or Turkey how seriously would you consider that job offer?
This isn't a manifesto trying to take down women's sports. I enjoy women's tennis, I loved watching the US women's soccer team run rampant over the world cup and even female golfers are starting to gain popularity which is fantastic!
This is specifically about how the WNBA is a league on the decline and it has failed to establish a foothold in the US. The market isn't there, the product is subpar, the business is bad and the players make significantly more money elsewhere.
I am curious to hear what you guys have to say about the WNBA, do you think it has a future? If so what can the league do to generate interest ?

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Literally Who from AEW, "First Zoom call of the day, because I'm a pro wrestler who needs to work a side gig for some reason, the kid recognized me as a a megastar from huge mainstream company AEDub, I bet you nobody in WWE gets recognized as a megasuperstar when they go into their day job"

I know this probably gets asked a lot but I’m looking for a local home every day route trucking job, I live on a farm and have farm chores I cannot be away from so I need to be home. What companies are safe bets for local routes? I’m in PA.

Job Opportunities in Minneapolis, MN for a Sports Tech/Betting company.

@mitchellvii: You know what's gonna happen to all these companies that have been flying their employees all over the place? They are going to find out they do an even better job telecommuting. I bet after all this is over, you see a lot more employees working from home.

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