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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
, 4 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
If anyone ever asks whether technical debt has a concrete cost, here’s Prosper paying $3 million because they lost institutional knowledge of how a number was calculated (and it snowballed from there): sec.gov/litigation/adm…
Prosper, which I did business with from both sides of their market (successfully), was often comprehensively mismanaged.

Example: for years, they described the way to calculate the return of a portfolio of loans as the interest rate minus the default rate.
They also got dinged by the SEC some years ago for selling securities unlawfully, and their strategy in response to this was to go Bond villain, which, while amusing, does not generally reduce the SEC’s desire to bring enforcement actions.
For historical context, this was the issue which first caused me to start commenting on HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377347
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
This is a thing which I've also seen in applications for investment and by job candidates. We socialize to avoid "bragging" / "tooting your own horn." Many people overcorrect against this.

Restrained professional confidence is a very good skill to work on.
If you're too uncomfortable with being self-promotional and don't have sufficient time to self-modify prior to submitting the document you're working on, try stepping back and saying "Would police think this was relevant evidence if they were trying me for being qualified?"
Longer-term I suggest thinking of self-promotion the same way you do about self-cooking, self-writing, self-filing-the-taxes: if you don't pay a professional to do this it is unlikely someone will do it for you for free w/o an existing relationship so it's pretty much on you.
Read 4 tweets
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
Now *that* is an intriguing idea.

A refinement might be something like a "Employees of YC Winter 2019 Class" syndicate, which might be even more employee-friendly, due to the diversification factor, and might alleviate some social concerns internal to a company.
To elaborate a little bit here:

Most employees are probably over-exposed to the future of their company by both equity ownership and the implicit current value of their future career prospects both being a) heavily correlated to the company and b) very large relative to wealth.
So if somebody was early-career and asked me "Hey should I buy more stock in my employer", even if ceteris paribus that were available at an attractive price, that is probably not a great financial decision in most cases.
Read 6 tweets
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Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
The Billion Dollar Whale levels of audacity in fraud that Crypto Capital Corp got up to (including funding a football league with money almost certainly misappropriated from investors) should be a reminder that selecting partners for expertise in money laundering is a bit risky.
Need to get my Kindle out later today to find the book about financial frauds for a citation, but there are so often layers and layers discovered here, and we’re somewhere between The Money Is Gone and The Money Was Never Actually There stages.
“What do you mean the money was never there?”

I mean that the cryptocurrency economy was in, and probably still is in, a credit bubble propped up by fraud. Everyone in it believes they are richer than they are, as they will find when they attempt to find the exits.
Read 4 tweets

Related threads

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76Eagle
@76Eagle76
Time stamps have meaning.

Most recent Q post is April 19, 2019. The First Day of Passover 2019 and also Good Friday 2019, which is the anniversary of Christ being Crucified.
Check out the Q post number (3316) and the time stamp (14:41).

3316.
 3-316.
3-316.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16

The Biblical meaning of 3 represents The Holy Trinity: The Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

3 also represents The Resurrection.
Read 10 tweets
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Detritivore Biome
@noahsussman
technical debt is a better metaphor once you know that engineers don’t borrow from technical credit cards but rather from technical loan sharks
technical debt isn’t clean managed debt like business debt. it’s an obligation scrawled illegibly on a cocktail napkin.
the inevitable result of unpaid technical debt is that you and your colleagues get your technical legs broken by the technical equivalent of Tony Soprano.
Read 8 tweets
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Richard Dalton 🇪🇺
@richardadalton
Technical Debt is not a catch-all term for bad code.

It is deliberate borrowing against future productivity. You must know when you're doing it and why.

Bad code that bites you long after you've written it can't be retrospectively labelled Technical Debt. It's just bad code.
Good Debt:
Technical Debt is careful deliberate borrowing to get something sooner. Like a car loan or a mortgage.

Bad Debt:
Living beyond your means sprint after sprint means the team runs a deficit, so there is a debt. But it's neither careful nor deliberate. It's reckless.
Almost every software team talks about their technical debt. For most the problem is really their technical deficit, not their technical debt.

Stop talking about Technical Debt and start thinking about your Technical Budget, and whether your team runs a surplus or deficit.
Read 4 tweets
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Snow White ⏳
@SnowWhite7IAM
Christ was a Jew.
The word 'Christian' wasn't invented yet.
Muslims believe Christ to be a Messiah.

Meaning of 'Jerusalem' in Hebrew is Fountain of Peace. And here 2,000 years later, we see -usa- in the middle.

This is an insightful thread, I encourage all to read! #Blessings
Phobias are just that, phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, defined by a persistent & excessive fear of an object or situation.

These 3 religions have more in common than we have been taught. Knowledge is wisdom!

Jesus in Islam: ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (Arabic: عيسى بن مريم, ...
... lit. 'Jesus, son of Mary'), the penultimate prophet & messenger of God (Allah) & al-Masih, the Arabic term for Messiah (Christ), sent to guide the Children of Israel with a new revelation: al-Injīl (Arabic for "the gospel").
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_…
...
Read 8 tweets
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David Crandall
@DavidCrandall
1/ Social Debt impacts business as much as, if not more than, technical debt.

That’s a big claim for a term that I’ve not heard discussed much so let's unpack this.

Note: This is the first in my Lessons Learned sharing as encouraged by numerous people last week.
2/ Let’s start by defining technical debt, the idea of which is not new to anyone in the tech industry even though the term might be.
3/ Technical Debt is the implied cost associated with choosing an easy but sub-optimal solution now instead of an optimal solution that would take longer to implement.

TL;DR version: The headache caused by using quick fixes instead of taking the time to do it right.
Read 22 tweets
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Edwin Hayward
@uk_domain_names
Here are 180 factual, fully-sourced examples of the impact Brexit is already having on the UK. Jobs going, investment drying up, companies moving assets to the EU, or redomiciling. All happening as Government burns through £billions chasing a no deal Brexit it doesn't have to.
The Government has spent £4.2 billion pounds on Brexit preparations (£2.2 billion in previous Budgets, plus an additional £2 billion in the most recent Budget.) 1/180
gov.uk/government/new…
EU citizens will be forced to register to stay in the UK after Brexit (deadline is June 2021). The system, which cost the Government £175 million, will have to cope with over 3,500,000 applications, or several thousand a day on average. 2/180
news.sky.com/story/eu-settl…
Read 182 tweets

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