Patrick McKenzie

Retweeted for endorsement. It's so effective it feels like cheating.https://twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1223723933959983104 …

"Hello can I offer you an extremely large basket of high-variance options." "I suppose that depends on the price." "Oh it's a coffee or email each." "Wait, what." "Yeah nobody wants them." "The world is mad." (Also feels like the right thing to do, but that doesn't get it done.)

Is the financial angle helpful here? *shrug* Conceptually speaking: helping someone out in a very minor way gives you some exposure to their future upside. Basically everyone underestimates how much people can grow/accomplish in, say, 10 years, particularly among outliers.

A thing the financial angle helps with is to the extent you think the metaphor is descriptive of reality you can prioritize where to invest based on how the metaphor is priced. e.g. Options are worth more if they're risky and worth more if long-dated.

(Risky here being shorthand for "high variance in expected returns of the underlying.") If you gave a choice "Would you rather have 100 CEOs in your network or 100 college students?" assuming low levels of investment in each relationship I think almost everyone picks wrong.

N minutes ago, for the N00th time, someone approaching their first job in industry sent me an email out of the blue with a winding story about their salary negotiation and the question "Should I ask for X or would that be too much?" My advice: pretty predictable. Took 30s.

There are very few future world states in which I will regret the trade "I spent ~2 hours on email in 2020 answering a question which is a bit below my paygrade. Now, in 2030, 250 geeks walk around every day attributing $Y of their salary to me. The are not in first job anymore."