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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 3rd, 2024

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  • Always spend at least 20% of the time on stuff you know is necessary, but will never be prioritized by marketing heads.

    This is the way.

    Leadership: Please don’t prioritize code cleanup, we have critical features we need to release.

    Me: Oh. I didn’t realize you were taking ownership of (complex code no one wants to be associated with). I’ve got diagrams I can send you.

    Leadership: No, that’s still yours. We just need you to focus on these features, and not any planned maintenance, for just the next sprint.

    Me: So you’ll take over guiding maintenance on (complex source code no one wants to get near)? I can send you the backlog for your project plans…

    Leadership: That’s not what we’re saying. Please just prioritize the feature.

    Me: Oh. Sure. I will prioritize that feature, and I’ll only do the bare minimum cleanup that can’t be avoided, right now. (Which will turn out to be however much cleanup I damn well please, because their eyes glaze over if I explain it, anyway.)

    Leadership: Now you’re getting it!

    Me: Gee whiz. Thanks for talking it through with me.













  • If you don’t have the nerve to hold a stock for 30 years through ups, downs, crashes and rebuilds, there’s a thing called a high yield savings account that may better fit your current stage of life better and risk tolerance.

    And let’s all point to the sign:

    “Only invest money that you don’t need right now, and could afford to lose.”

    If Trump’s antics can make you sell, you should sell right now and not buy back in, because that’s money you should not have invested in the first place - by your own standards for peace of mind.

    President Trump is far from the first or the last powerful person to wield massive global power that negatively affects the markets. Markets perform with strong returnsin spite of bullshit from world leaders, not because any world leaders are particularly competent (with some very rare exceptions).

    It is scary right now. It really is. But that’s what investing is about. We risk some money we don’t need right now, in hope of some growth later. Pulling out when things are going down is statistically a guarantee to lock in losses. But peaceful sleep at night beats 2%-20% growth.

    To answer your question: absolutely. Stocks are going to spend four or more years underperforming where they could have under better leadership. As they have done before, and as they will do again. That’s pretty much been true with every president during my lifetime, though, and through most of recorded history. Hindsight is 20/20, and all that. And anyway, democracies don’t, so far, tend to elect economists.