The key claim is: there’s no way with any reasonable amount of resources that you can guarantee that the software and hardware are bug-free and that they haven’t been maliciously attacked
The same could be said about other electronic systems that already govern lives, like planes, cars, phones and medical equipment.
Except half the country is not doing everything possible to bring every plane under their control. With the the other half trying to resit with little regard for the safety of the passengers. Security and transparency is far more important when humans are in conflict.
Not if you don't smoke. Smoking accounts for ~30% of cancer deaths in the US. A substantial number of the rest are due to skin cancer (lots of white people descended from Northern Europeans living in sunny climates).
Very off. I didn't want to create a spreadsheet. :-)
But the idea is that $95M of the costs are fixed, so whatever you add goes to growth. So on 100M of revenue you have 5M to invest in growth, which will get you a 5M revenue stream the next year. On 120M you have 25M to invest.
This sounds far-fetched for traditional businesses, but isn't so off for SaaS companies. Once you get through sales, general and administration and fixed R&D costs, the margins on great SaaS companies is very high. It can be 80 or 90%. This is why GAAP metrics can look bad on them for a while (have to get over the fixed cost hurdle, and sales costs can be very high) but once you're profitable, it's a huge cash cow. This is one reason why Salesforce and Bloomberg do so well. They make tons of cash, and any competitor will need to lose money for several years to catch them.
1. Many jobs are acquired based on things other than one's skill set. Some that I've seen: friend, family, lives in the area, internal candidate (so less process), spouse of current employee, minimally viable candidate that avoids a public job announcement, need a butt in the seat ASAP or the seat is lost, no skilled candidate will actually apply for the job (e.g., lower salary, bad reputation, etc.)... the list could go on and on.
2. The people doing the hiring might not have had the skill set required to know that he was unqualified.
3. He may be sandbagging his own skills. A lot of times the hard part of a job is problem solving. The tech part, even if he did not know it at the time, is learnable. The problem-solving part is less easy to teach.
4. Due to various unofficial policies that exist at places like universities, there may have been a requirement to find a new place for him when he was "fired". This could be for a number of reasons. Maybe he was actually laid off (e.g., reduced budget for that department and he was junior). Maybe he fits a certain profile that they want to keep at the university (e.g., he's connected to someone important). Maybe they wanted to avoid a potential lawsuit for wrongful dismissal.
Having seen a lot of odd stuff happen at well-known universities, I have to say that my curiosity has been piqued. I hope more of the story is told...
In 3 years you'd have made a total of $2mil and can retire and do whatever you want.
It's not only ok but also healthy to post this question, because you're full of ideas and want to work on other things. It's not very ok to blow your earnings off. I'd stick it out if I were you and would be happy to trade places.
The same could be said about other electronic systems that already govern lives, like planes, cars, phones and medical equipment.
And yet life goes on.