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merth commented on Tell HN: I'm having the worst career winter of my life    · Posted by u/mariogintili
csomar · 2 months ago
You still pay taxes through VAT, property, and other schemes.
merth · 2 months ago
Not necessarily. Basic food is zero-rated for VAT, and if you qualify you can get council tax reduction. For example, I get a 25% council tax discount. If you're unemployed with no income, you may genuinely pay very little direct tax, it depends on circumstances.
merth commented on Being poor vs. being broke   blog.ctms.me/posts/2025-1... · Posted by u/speckx
J_McQuade · 4 months ago
In the terminology of the article - which I enjoyed and recommend that you read when you get time - these friends of yours are not 'poor', they are 'broke'.
merth · 4 months ago
article says broke for temporary, these people poor 10-20 years. that doesnt sounds like temporary. they get government or familiy support, and rarely work short term here and there.
merth commented on Being poor vs. being broke   blog.ctms.me/posts/2025-1... · Posted by u/speckx
moralestapia · 4 months ago
This argument is baseless.

All those things add up to a couple hundred a month, let's be extreme and say it's $1,000 USD/month. That amount will never move you up in the socioeconomic ladder. You're two-three orders of magnitude away(!).

"But it adds up" could argue the midwit, "why don't you just get a job that pays you more", "just invest", "why didn't you buy bitcoin in 2010", "why don't you just buy the winning lottery ticket". I wrote all those in order of increasing stupidity. Not aimed at you @merth, it's just stuff that I've actually heard.

Nobody who is wealthy these days got there by skipping Starbucks and instead throwing that dollar in a jar. Nobody.

You need to cross a threshold of (income/purchasing power) to be able to start building things that matter. It's extremely difficult these days because the denominator there is almost zero.

As TFA states, people who have not experienced poverty have ZERO idea of what it is like.

merth · 4 months ago
> You need to cross a threshold of (income/purchasing power) to be able to start building things that matter. It's extremely difficult these days because the denominator there is almost zero.

I agree, but you should do both I think, increase your income and decrease your expenses.

merth commented on Being poor vs. being broke   blog.ctms.me/posts/2025-1... · Posted by u/speckx
merth · 4 months ago
I have poor friends, they spend more on Netflix, Gym, Starbucks, IPhones, steam games etc then me, and they are poor for atleast last 10-20 years. I almost never have any of these and I have given them that classic suggestions like the cancelling the gym membership that he/she rarely or never uses, and it doesnt work, they keep spending money on garbage with money they don't have.
merth commented on World Simulator: Create and Play Interactive AI Worlds   worldsimulator.ai/... · Posted by u/machmadera
vntok · 5 months ago
That seems complex because every second of interactive video costs money to generate, to the tune of 10 credits per 4s of video or "player action" if I understand correctly.
merth · 5 months ago
put some prerendered videos, few of the good ones.
merth commented on Replacement.ai   replacement.ai... · Posted by u/wh313
sincerely · 5 months ago
I kind of get it, but at the same time...isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology? It feels like somehow we should have figured out how to cope with the "but what about the old jobs" problem
merth · 5 months ago
We invent machines to free ourselves from labour, yet we’ve built an economy where freedom from labour means losing your livelihood.
merth commented on Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews?    · Posted by u/_swfb
stuartjohnson12 · 7 months ago
Will be blunt since I imagine you're fed up and don't want affirmations.

In the most common case where I see engineers who say they struggle with the soft skills parts of interviewing, the underlying issue is a lack of skill in communication - working out what's important, stating it clearly and concisely, and in a way appropriate to the audience. I read some of your blog and found it pleasantly chatty, well structured, and obviously technical. If you communicate like you do in writing, there is obviously no problem there. I have no doubt that your account of performing well on technical questions is correct. However...

After some quick google searches, what I did find in your digital footprint is:

- A relatively high number of online posts complaining about employers in general across several years

- A tweet from a few years ago where you say you're fed up of software engineering but are forced to stick with it

- (as you stated) a jumpy work history

My best guess is that you're failing the digital footprint check. If I was hiring and post interview was doing a little more digging on candidates to help do a final pick, I would look at the short tenures, the outwardly directed frustration at employers, the stated lack of desire to be a software engineer at all, and pass on you.

As for why this is happening after several technical interviews? Most likely that's when you undergo final background checks and get cut out of the process. If you are burned out, sick of workplace social narratives, and don't want to work as a software engineer, I sincerely empathise for you. However: don't let me, a random hacker news commenter, find that out in under 2 minutes of time spent on Google.

merth · 7 months ago
Because of these "digital footprint checks" now nobody can truly say what they want online. Either you have to put on a fake persona or just go completely silent. It’s self-censorship in disguise. Dead Internet Theory confirmed.
merth commented on Why building a self-hosted SaaS is harder   getlago.com/blog/self-hos... · Posted by u/FinnLobsien
impure · 7 months ago
> Even low-risk fixes like renaming a database column can break a billing run when a job is currently using that data.

You should tell me how you rename database columns in AWS without breaking anything.

I’m not really sure what the point of this article is, it just seems to promote the company’s migration method with a misleading title. But I highly disagree that self-hosted is harder. With many self-hosted BaaS systems I’d argue it’s easier.

merth · 7 months ago
I didnt read the article but how you do is, you should create new column without deleting the old one, and your code should be updated to use the new column, once you phase out the old version of the code, you backfill data from old column to new one, and delete the old column.
merth commented on Job growth has slowed sharply; the question is why   stayathomemacro.substack.... · Posted by u/paulpauper
pasquinelli · 7 months ago
> How does increasing wealth inequality drive price increases?

i'm not the person you asked, and i'm just spit-balling, but here's a way: wealth inequality means there's a group that has substantially more wealth than normal, let's call that group A, and the complimentary group of people who don't have substantially more wealth than normal, let's call them B. A's wealth ultimately comes from B-- you know, you got workers who make you more money than you pay them, you extract rent from them, they buy your stuff.

past a certain point of inequality, A controls so much wealth that they could exert power over the market to squeeze B even more-- wages lag further behind productivity, rents go up, goods cost more. this is inflation, yeah?

merth · 7 months ago
i'm not the person you replied but if wages lag furhter, how rents going up? it should go down since there is noone to be able to pay higher rents. they have no choice but either convince homeowner or downgrade. and Group A(rich + upper-middle) won't rent since they have enough wealth to buy a house, they may upgrade and cause inflation in luxury houses/goods.
merth commented on Amazon is on the cusp of using more robots than humans in its warehouses   wsj.com/tech/amazon-wareh... · Posted by u/jbredeche
zdragnar · 8 months ago
The cotton and wool mills may not have been great for the Luddites, but everyone else benefitted. Using terms someone else used in a sibling thread, they were a "net benefit for humanity".
merth · 8 months ago
> net benefit for humanity

Some people might argue that wealth concentrated in the top 1% is a net benefit if you look at it as one big pool of resources. But will the remaining 99% actually see any of that benefit? Or will the 1% simply tighten their grip, keeping the rest dependent on their “generosity”?

u/merth

KarmaCake day94February 9, 2019
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