However Elon was able to ipo before them which took a lot liquidity of the market. Their financials are exposed. The market condition and sentiment now is in the gutter. It would be very interesting to see how these would pan out

A senior(l5) is the tech lead on the project level. He is not in charge of handling the team's scope. As long as he handled his own projects well, he would usually pass the review cycle. The difference is crucial. At staff and above, the engineer's responsibility is vastly larger than a senior's.

I am not saying a senior can't do a staff's job - that's how he get promoted once he demonstrated that he is operating at a staff level, i.e "inventing" scope for his team. But a senior's scope is much smaller than a staff's.

This applies to almost all US medium to large tech companies

But for staff engineers, they need to to discover the scope themselves. That's where "inventing" coming from. Not saying inventing is a good word here, but requirement alone is not enough for staff level's work

The next few years would be fun.

If it's so easy to disrupt visa/mastercard payment network, they wouldn't be able to charge this much. Payment is a highly competitive business. We witnessed so many payment companies went under or were bought out, but these two stay for years and are still profitable.

The truth is their moat is considered very durable and hard to build. A global n banks to n banks payment network is not as simple as how people thought.

In the end if there are enough incentives(usually money) people would work on those.

Shang being an villain fits this narrative.

Most of my time was spent on grinding stem subjects

It was not until working after finishing Universities, I started to get back to understand those topics. It also became much more enjoyable once I had the contexts. And learning the contexts is a actually a bigger part of the fun

It's about risk adjusted returns, not higher returns. If you are not considering the risk assessment you are objectively wrong. Take my previous example, how is actively working with you money by taking higher risk less gambling, than passively investing for example an all weather portfolio which is designed to preserve the capital? An all weather portfolio is firstly proposed by Ray Dalio to be as conservative as possible to hedge against all kind of risks while hopefully get some gain.

> Most "investing conservatively" is just being a bit more wary as to what risks are acceptable.

That's objectively wrong. For example lots of etf is designed to reduce risk by diversifying the investment. Just take your own just put money in the bank example. Suppose you do not live in stable country US/EU, and your country is having high inflation. How is just putting money in the bank with your country's depreciating currency less risky than let's say you invest in a global portfolio or an all weather portfolio? In this case, by not managing your risk profile, you are taking more risk.

I am only giving out 1 example to show that `Most financial investment is really putting money into something higher` is objectively wrong. It's actually the opposite if you look into how portfolio managing works. Majority of the funds managed for the Sovereign state or the rich are about hedging against the risks, it's the opposite of gambling.

For example, it's also possible to be actively taking part in the money making activity while taking unnecessary risk. A person can run his own company but recklessly making bets on the loan or spending decisions. So this is the other side of the story where they are gambling and they are actively working with their money.

There are lot of value investors which sit at home do stock picking occasionally. They don't work for their money. I don't think they are gambling.

The only investors that fits your non gambling definition seems to be the active investors who take part in the companies. But most investors don't

https://fortune.com/2026/03/23/meta-cofounder-mark-zuckerber...