There are no taxes incurred on the gains or losses realized inside a traditional or Roth IRA when trades are executed. With a Roth IRA, the dollars come out tax free within certain constraints (age or account lifetime, roughly speaking), with contributions sourced from after tax earned income. With a traditional IRA, taxes are due when withdrawn. They can only be funded with dollars, not shares or assets. You can direct your investments with a self directed IRA for esoteric asset classes, but the IRS has strong guidelines around this to prevent self dealing as well as requiring transactions to be “arms length”. You cannot borrow against these accounts (although you can roll traditional IRA funds into a 401k and borrow against it there as a fixed term loan at an interest rate set by the plan administrator that follows the benchmark rate).
What changed? I didn't see anything in the article that says you can't buy startup (or other non-public) stock in an IRA, and if you do and it goes well, your IRA can become very valuable. If I work for a startup again, I'm definitely going to see if I can get early stock into a (Roth) IRA, because it'd be real handy if the stock does well, since you can trade in a IRA without tax consequences. Seems complex to set up though.
The US isn't at war in Ukraine, we're not fighting there. Nobody who's actually anti-war looks at Russia's invasion and says "oh that's fine let it happen", everyone supports the right to defend yourself.
The US is sending crazy amounts of money over there while average Americans are seeing their living standards get worse and worse. Grassroots republicans want Ukraine to fight their own war with their own money, not keep sending money over their while Americans go hungry.
So then we're not worrying about the "anti-war" position anymore, alright.
I mean, grassroots Republicans elected Reagan who beat the Soviets and Bush who wanted to "fight them over there so we don't face them here", they're certainly comfortable with spending money on the military.
They haven't historically wanted to spend that money on welfare though, so I'm not sure that Americans are going hungry because of Ukraine.
Well, in this case the war was started by someone else, with neither aid nor encouragement by anyone American. Acting to help one of the fighting parties win doesn't seem noticeable "pro-war", AFAICT, it's just a question of how the war ends, as opposed to other possible ends of the same war.
Fund the war is an odd way to put it IMO, since the war would be there anyway… but leave that. I don't follow American politics. Do grassroots republicans oppose helping Ukraine now? I seem to remember that some months ago, a large majority of democratic voters did and a smaller majority of republican ones. How has the situation changed?
> During the meeting, which is known in internal Amazon lingo as a “fishbowl” meeting, Jassy declined to share data that motivated his decision to require employees to return to the office. The CEO told his charges it was a “judgment” call.
Could some brave soul please leak whatever data these guys are seeing? Reports, statistics, even just emails where they whine about empty offices? Something tangible that gives us mere mortals actual perspective.
The conversation is dominated by conspiracy theories about real estate investments and 'CEO vibes', it feels untethered and fact-free.
The data probably suggests they should lay off a bunch of people & that this might be best way for them to do so, in terms of not legally needing to offer severance, legal issues, PR, stock prices, etc.
100% this. Employers know they can turn up the heat so to speak by making the workplace less enjoyable and more people will leave b/c of that. That saves them from having to lay off people. I think it's important to note layoffs tend to push stock prices down and that's what these folks specifically care about b/c that's what's good for their pocket book.
I have read this reasoning from time to time, but how does it make sense?
Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?
The premise here is that they're holding off a layoff, or at least minimizing the layoff. A benefit of not doing a proper layoff: when you tell people you're just enforcing a new policy, you can make exceptions.
So, if this doesn't reduce the workforce enough, a proper layoff will soon follow. We saw Google enforce "return to the office" in April 2022 followed up by layoffs in January 2023. Microsoft had similar timings WRT to return to the office and layoffs as well.
And again, the premise here is about layoffs, letting a large number of people go. Amazon can fire individual slackers if they want to without playing these games.
For truly high performers who are indispensable and a flight risk, the company will always make exceptions. But those are truly rare (<5%) and even among those, some want RTO, some want WFH and some want a hybrid.
> Wouldn't most of the high performers who don't want to go back to the office, just quit and get a better job, while low performing individuals would stick as long as possible since they could keep slacking as long as they go to the office three days a week?
Maybe, but that sounds like a problem that isn't guaranteed to happen and isn't one that you'd be personally held responsible for, since everyone else was doing the same thing... how could you have known? No one ever got fired for buying IBM and all that.
"We already successfully exclude low-performers due to Stack Ranki--er, Unregretted Attrition--so this policy will only be impacting the insufficiently dedicated." /s
If the CEO has a wealth of data and it says with remote working Metric A has gone up which is good, and Metric B has gone down which is bad, they have to make a judgement call about which metric to rely on even though they're making an evidence-based decision.
Great, then share that evidence. The problem is all these royal decrees to return to the office never come with even a shred of actual data to explain them.
Once it became clear that they couldn’t show WFH harmed productivity, their arguments became increasingly abstract (e.g., “office culture”) and finally we’ve arrived at simply “because I said so”.
Why should RTO need data? That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement. Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.
Sample size of 1 - at my company, remote sucks even if we tried to go all-in on fully remote. I simply cannot have trusted relationships with my colleagues since everything has to be writing or is possible being recorded when on video. In person, both parties can share candid thoughts in person without any fear of being recorded for ever.
Sounds like you work in a kind of cut throat place. Is yours a common worry? I have never worried about anything like this in the last ~7 years of working remotely
I also worked at some of the nicest environments (Google) and still, it was drilled into our minds that anything in writing can be used against us or company. In various formal and informal trainings, we were explicitly told to carry out sensitive conversations in person.
If there's no evidence a call is being recorded, I'm very comfortable that it is not.
That said, I do think it's harder to establish solid working relationships purely virtually. Possible but harder. During the pandemic a lot of people probably coasted based on prior relationships and we're likely starting to see some of capital running out.
>That was the setup until 2020 and it worked. Especially for the leadership who have grown up in that requirement.
And people were very happy with carriages until cars came along. Things change, the world changed, WFH became the new reality. Being stuck in the past way of doings just because it was done in the past is idiotic. Leadership is especially bad about adapting to change because it means actually having to learn and try new things, which 100% explains their resistance to WFH.
Much easier to glance at badge swipe-in times and go chew out some peon than to figure out how to actually do the work of management.
>Onus is on the pro-remote side to provide data that that works.
Sure, and that's already been shown. In 2020 there were dire predictions of productivity drops when WFH was implemented on a large-scale. Turns out, that didn't happen. All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.
Ergo, it works.
So, again
>Why should RTO need data?
Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH. This is why in my first comment I said that the justifications used by management have become increasingly abstract, because there is nothing concrete they can point to as support for their decisions.
Sorry you work in such a harsh environment, consider changing jobs.
> All attempts to determine the effects of WFH show no-to-positive effects on productivity.
Nope, we had a different experience. For the first few months, we all coasted on our prior relationships. Also, it was a pretty unique moment in the history and there was a "let's rise to the challenge" feeling.
Later on as employees churned and new ones joined, as well as the remote fatigue set in, we saw a drastic drop in productivity.
> Because, as noted above, there hasn't been any measurable drop in productivity due to WFH.
There has been, in our company. Management is wondering why we have less output when our workforce has more than doubled in the remote setting. To their credit, they literally went all in on remote. But one key thing they didn't realize is that remote needs rewiring of the entire communication culture. Much easier said than done.
> Could some brave soul please leak whatever data these guys are seeing? Reports, statistics, even just emails where they whine about empty offices? Something tangible that gives us mere mortals actual perspective.
Yeah, the "Gut" dataset, gathered from "My ass", and filtered by "bullshit" column.
We have to stop playing this game and pretending like RTO is some hidden innovation-building gem that no one is aware about that turns failing businesses into Fortune 100 powerhouses.
People in the 90s had it figured out - if you want people to get together to discuss important issues, it's called a business trip. No, you don't need to do it for every sprint or feature proposal. Do it in moderation, 2-3 times a year, and let people live where they want to live (usually next to their families).
>The conversation is dominated by conspiracy theories about real estate investments and 'CEO vibes', it feels untethered and fact-free.
One might think the fact that they don’t readily offer concrete evidence to support their actions is itself evidence that these “conspiracy theories” are on the right track.
The conversation is dominated by such talk because, as you said, no evidence otherwise has been offered to explain the fervent desire of those at the top for returning to the office.
I really like having a lot of screen real-estate. So, I bought a LG 34WK95U-W, which is a 34" 21:9 monitor with a 5120x2160 resolution. It was about $1100. I also bought a very sturdy monitor arm ($100). The monitor floats above my laptop (the two screens form a squat "T" shape) and I get a lot of screen space and it looks very crisp.
Sister comment I made about roast date. Super important for most snobs, along with dark/light roast etc. etc. there are lots of variations. But the roast date is interesting to me as it affects the "supply chain" aspect of this. You will have to fly/truck (but not sail) the coffee if you are not near where it was roasted.
This applies only to beans. For ground or instant ... doesn't matter. Damage has been done :-)....
To elaborate - it really depends on the type of coffee. Some people really like the cheaper robusta - some people like a 2nd wave arabica blend - some people want that very expensive 3rd wave coffee where you know the story of the farmer and his family. You choose what type and quality of coffee you want to have made and we will find someone in our manufacturer network to make it for you.
> Looking ahead, Fulford said, Feeld might expand to connecting people in physical spaces and at events as well as online. “We don’t see ourselves just as a dating company,” he said but, rather, as “something that potentially looks like a media or network platform company.” It’s a nice idea, but making Feeld too much about figuring out who you are and less about already knowing might alienate a user base that is tired of having to explain itself. Its members just want to meet others who have already been to the rave, or the dungeon, or the dark room, or the play space, and who don’t need the rules of engagement to be spelled out.
This is a company that in it's pre-Eternal-September era and might not realize it. I hope they figure out how to retain their magic.
If they are in a post-Eternal-September situation, they follow the Facebook.com path: grow at all costs, then coast and squeeze revenue until the last wave of users leave. (FB's TAM is "everyone", so it's lucrative. Most others have a smaller market).
If they are in a pre-Eternal-September situation and they want to avoid Eternal September, that's different. Then, they should work to slow user growth, improve onboarding, and have some moderation. The goal is to integrate new users slowly, so they buy into the culture before they change it. It's difficult.
Can you buy and sell shares tax-free if the cash > security > cash conversions all happen inside the IRA?
What about capital gains taxes?
Can the money inside the IRA be spent?
Could you borrow against the IRA as collateral?
Can you make exotic investments or are there limitations?