Online communities have been vicious places since they first appeared. I’ve been a part of them for decades, and flame wars and nastiness are still as common as they’ve always been. Half-hearted attempts to encourage civil interaction inevitably take a back seat to growing a community’s user base. The reasons for this have everything to […]
Business
Many People Providing Advice Are Liars
Whenever someone posts advice online or writes an advice book, people bend over backwards to believe them. Any questioning of the advice’s validity is done hesitantly. Audiences desperately offer gurus the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has led to widespread deceit in the advice giving business. John T. Reed famously went through “Rich […]
Trolls
I’ve been a part of digital communities since before most people had heard of the Internet (and long before most people accessed it for the first time). Almost from the start, there have been anti-social users known as trolls. Their motivation in most exchanges are to antagonize other users, provoke them, and disrupt the communities […]
The Windmill Method Released
I’ve been working on a real estate investing book called “The Windmill Method” and it’s now been released. It’s an approach for finding a good deal in most markets by putting in aggressively low offers on multiple properties. I’ve written previous posts that discussed ideas that this book expands on. The biggest issue with this […]
The Importance Of “Slack Time” In A Job
There’s a “polite fiction” with employment that every employee is working as hard as they’re capable of. Perhaps the other side of this is that employers are paying employees as much as possible. A steady stream of Quora questions ask some variation of an employer considering firing their most productive employee who gets work done […]
Make ‘No’ Your Magic Word
When two-year-olds first learn to say no, it’s a trying time for their parents. The epiphany that these all-powerful gods, known as mom and dad, who have controlled every aspect of their existence up to that point can be refused is intoxicating. Some studies have measured that toddlers argue with their parents 20-25 times an […]
Negotiating After Getting A Job Offer
I’ve published my second non-fiction book. It’s about making the most of a job offer from a company, increasing the compensation as much as possible. It’s currently available for pre-order and will be released on Friday, September 9th. UPDATE: As of November 14, 2022, it’s now also available as an audiobook. I decided to write […]
How to Pay International Contractors
Introduction Hiring offshore workers has been a prominent feature of globalization for years. An ever-increasing number of companies have decided to tap into the vast pool of talent available beyond the U.S. borders. Hiring this way is different, and it’s natural to feel nervous about it the first time. “How do I find workers?”, “how […]
A Practical View on the 4% Rule
In the February 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Association of Individual Investors an article called “Retirement Spending: Choosing a Sustainable Withdrawal Rate,” by Philip L. Cooley, Carl M. Hubbard, and Daniel T. Walz (all professors at Trinity University in Texas), appeared. It has been nicknamed, the Trinity Study, and the central finding was using an annual 4% withdrawal rate, […]
Qualities of a Good Job & Life
I tend to like “life advice”. Whether it’s an article describing someone’s insight, a good graduation address or a book with general strategies for common issues I’m usually intrigued. At the same time, I have contempt for quite a bit of “self help” and have written damning reviews of books like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. A few books […]