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Omg! the creator of Ballionaire is a laidoff metamate?! That's so inspirational. I'm sure this will make it on Meta blind sometime.

I'm at Meta still and working on my own take on the roguelike game inspired by Balatro/Luck be a landlord and Ballionaire too. Any advice for myself and others on how to balance work/life/game?

If you're interested, I bet people would love to have you back for a tech talk. I think we should at least link this to your badge post haha.

How much time did you spend on tweaking the tutorial?

Do you use analytics to balance your game? (So Meta right?)


I don't get how Robinhood can make this move. I see this move as a lose/lose. Anyone care to emphasize with them? Maybe they see themselves as saving the lay investor?

But then from a price action perspective, - If GME goes up, people are going to have the sentiment that Robinhood stopped them from making money to protect the fat cats - If GME goes down, people are going to blame RH.


There’s 4 broad buckets of costs for most companies - g&a (general and administrative), s&m (sales and marketing), r&d, and cost of revenue.

The cost has to be classified into one of these buckets and so the CFO was probably just clarifying into which bucket they lumped it.

This is part of the point of generalized accounting is so everyone gets a similar basis compare companies.


Oh I see, thanks!


> The cost has to be classified into one of these buckets

Either PR was not consulted or they don’t understand how this comes off.


I'm not fan of Facebook, but here it is in context:

> Total expenses were $12.2 billion in Q4, up 34%.

> Cost of revenue increased 25% and the growth was driven primarily by depreciation related to our infrastructure spend.

> R&D grew 36% and was driven primarily by increased investments in core product as well as our innovation efforts, particularly in AR/VR.

> Marketing and Sales grew 23% and was driven primarily by consumer and growth marketing.

> Finally, G&A grew 87%, largely driven by higher legal fees & settlements. This includes charges related to a $550M settlement in principle we reached this month in connection with the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act litigation.

This is standard for earnings calls. The point is for the CFO to add detail to the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) financial numbers so that investors understand why they changed. As @joez mentioned, companies have to report financial numbers according to GAAP, which mandates that companies disaggregate costs into specific areas. Both good and bad companies face lawsuits all the time, and the legal fees and settlements will show up in G&A. If G&A expenses change in an unexpected way, it is expected that the company will communicate why.

There's definitely a lot that goes into crafting these calls, but having listened to and read more than a thousand of them, I don't think there was anything poorly done in this specific example.


It's an earnings call. He put it in the terms his audience expected. Nobody made any deal out of it except one HN commenter. So I think it's okay


Their roadshow video is up: https://www.retailroadshow.com/

I always find the video presentation more insightful.

Edit: Directly linking to the video didn't work.


Session expired.


ugh, try just navigating from https://www.retailroadshow.com/



This is an awesome idea. Speaking from experience as someone who transitioned into engineering. I would have totally tried this if it was around 4 years ago. Good luck!


How bad is this?

Seems like they have offline mode. Do their customers know how to use this? What's the chance for increased fraudulent swipes?


If you swipe a card and their backend errors out or is unreachable, it does prompt you to switch to offline mode (as long as you're already logged in and have taken online transactions recently).

If a customer knows the payment processor is offline, they can use an invalid card and it will appear to go through. Merchant will be stuck with the liability after the transaction is later sent and declined.


Offline mode is great for when the shops WiFi or local provider is having connectivity issues. The Square software and reader queue card swipes and transactions along with tip and receipt information until a connection is reestablished. You can just keep ringing people up.

Today, we went into offline mode automatically and processed a few transactions. Then our app was forcibly logged out of Square service and we couldn't get back in to continue in offline mode.


AFAIK offline mode only works if you have successfully completed a non-offline transaction within the last 24 hours.


According to the docs on offline mode if the card is declined for any reason you as the merchant is on the hook. And those payments will attempt to process when their service is restored .


Offline mode is only available if your already logged in.


Feels like their old cultural values offers a glimpse into why they've had problems: - Ready, Aim, Fire. - Everyone's shit stinks. - Do it yourself.

Anyone able to elaborate more on what each of these mean?


This particular portion smells of a deliberate attempt to differentiate: "we are doing it 100% right now!" It says that their culture was never considered and its more of an attack on their old way of life. I'd venture to guess that much of that section is to create confidence in the "new" cultural values through differentiation.

I highly doubt there was a meeting where the old values where decided and driven forward in the company. This is all in an effort to be transparent again, just as they originally planned.


Do startups, and if so how, need to execute differently in today's frothy funding environment?

What are some technologies that excite you?


+1 for visibility. This comment needs to filter to the top.


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