100 years of financial history

Reference 

1. Paradigm shifts by Ray Dalio

Causes of Burnout

Target Audience

Software Engineers and Tech Lead Managers

Goal of this post

Any engineer reading this should develop an understanding of some of reasons for burnout. If they are themselves feeling burnt or on the edge, they should be able to RCA(root cause analyze) their situation independently and pin point some of the reasons.

Demystifying burnout

People often think that high workload causes burnout. But that is a fallacy. Someone who is excited about a technology, passionate about the mission of the company, finds meaning in their work, can see career progress may thrive under heavy workload and may even be super motivated to take on more.

Take ownership 

Always remember, as an engineer, you own your career. Managing your burnout is your responsibility. You can seek the help of your manager in the process, but it is always better to be on the driving seat yourself. The goal of this post is to outline the top reasons for burnout so that you can debug it yourself.

• Feeling like you have no control - this feeling is often exacerbated in highly dynamic, changing work environments with lot of ambiguity and lot of conflicting stakeholders
• Not getting acknowledged - again complex work environments and structures amplify this
• Having poor relationships with co-workers
• Being treated unfairly by your boss
• Having different values than your employer - this will lead to shrinkage in the meaning that you derive from the work. You will be less connected to the mission and will question "why" we are doing things. You will lose trust and will not see the same bigger picture as your leadership. This acts as a vicious cycle and you will be less and less motivated to go to work everyday leading to burnout. 
• If your organization is structured to hire and feed off of insecure overachievers or people perpetually suffering from imposters syndrome, you need to understand that dynamic ASAP. 

elite professional organizations deliberately set out to identify and recruit “insecure overachievers” — some leading professional organizations explicitly use this terminology, though not in public. Insecure overachievers are exceptionally capable and fiercely ambitious, yet driven by a profound sense of their own inadequacy. This typically stems from childhood, and may result from various factors, such as experience of financial or physical deprivation, or a belief that their parents’ love was contingent upon their behaving and performing well.

If you are an engineer reading this post who has experienced burnout, I would love to hear your story in comments. 

Burnout detector tests

1. Mind Tools : Burn out self test
2. Psychology today : Burn out test for non-services fields
3. Psychology today : Burn out test for services fields

References

1. If you are so successful, why are you working 70 hours per week

Coronavirus will expedite Amazonification of the world

Coronavirus is expediting the Amazonification of industries worldwide. Here are the first order effects of shift of usage to Amazon

• People are staying home instead of visiting malls and ordering essentials on Amazon. This is expedited by the large scale closure of malls and retail complexes. 
• People are ordering groceries on Whole Foods for home delivery inspite of higher prices compared to their local grocery store. For a lot of families, the grocery budget is moving to Amazon. Given the large scale closure of restaurants worldwide, this will only increase. 
• People staying home are watching videos on Amazon Prime Video for entertainment purposes. Given Prime membership benefit is already providing so much value, netflix and disney could be a discretionary expense and Prime video could be a necessary essential
• Businesses going through the sudden demand and revenue shocks will need to rethink their expenses and specially fixed cost expenses. Technology and IT will be a big fixed cost expense waiting to be cut at this point. This will expedite the move to Cloud (AWS is rightly positioned for this) as it provides the value proposition of making this a variable cost - pay as much as you use. If there is no demand, dont pay. This will put Amazon into a strong position with respect to the shift to Cloud. 
• Audible has made 100s of kids audiobook free. This will expedite adoption and usage of Alexa. Parents at home juggling kids, job and a pandemic will find this great value. 
• Amazon Care, the healthcare arm of Amazon will work with Bill Gates to delivery Coronavirus tests to homes in the Seattle area. If it works, this could be scaled globally in collaboration with Governments and could put Amazon in prime position to enter healthcare. 

Data points supporting the above trends

• Amazon hiring 100k new workers to meet demand 
• Amazon pantry temporarily closes as online shopping surge amid coronavirus outbreak
• Amazon AWS launches 20 million initiative to fight the coronavirus

All the above viewpoints and facts show that how Amazon has grown in value during these unprecedented times the world is facing through the pandemic. There is the other side of the equation, which shows that malls, commercial real estate could be in dire shape and there could be a lot of bankruptcies.

At the time of this writing, US already has more than 100k coronavirus cases and given the exponential spread, it doesnt look like stopping. In fact, things will get a lot worse, before it gets any better. 

Cheesecake factory, Subway and other major retailers have told their landlords that they cannot pay rent. The restaurant industry has already gone through unprecedented layoffs. Given that the US response to the crisis has been delayed, the closures will last as cases will continue multiplying. This will have cascading effects onto the landlords, malls, commercial real estate players who have these retaurants as renters. There will be cascading bankruptices which will spread through the economy. Malls will find it hard to find replacements during these tough times. Even if the economy were to open up today, people who are seeing widespread deaths in their communities arent going to rush to restaurants/malls anytime soon. 

This will complete the other side of the puzzle and will expedite Amazonification of the world.

Update July 24, 2020 

Putting my Money where my mouth is :

The Intelligent Investor - Book Review

Introduction

• Obvious growth in physical prospects of a business do not necessarily translate to profits for investors
• It was easy to forecast that the value of airtraffic would grow spectacularly over the years. But despite the expansion in revenues at a pace far greater than the computer industry, a combination of technological problems and overexpansion in capacity led to disastrous profit figures. 
• Same happened for Uber in 2015. Even though the rides volume grew massively till 2020, any investment in late 2015 saw negligible gains at the time of IPO. 
• Experts do not have a dependable way of selecting the most promising companies in the most promising industries
• The pendulum in stock markets swings from irrational exuberance to unjustifiable pessimism

Investment vs Speculation

• Investors judge the market price by establishing standards of value
• Speculators base their standards of value based on the market price
• The intelligent investor has no interest in being temporarily right. To reach your long term financial goals, you need to be reliably and sustainably right.

The Investor and Inflation

• As recently as 1973-82, the US went through one of the most painful bursts of inflation. As measured by CPI, prices more than doubled during that period rising at the rate of nearly 9% annually. In 1979, inflation raged at 13.3% paralyzing the economy in what is known as stagflation, and many leading commentators began questioning whether America could lead in the global marketplace.
• In times of deflation, it is better to be a lender than a borrower, which means that investors should keep atleast a small portion of their investment in bonds, as a form of insurance against deflating prices. 
• The stock market lost money money in 8 of the 14 years in which inflation exceeded 6% and the average returns of these years was a measly 2.6%. 
• While mild inflation allows companies to pass on the increased costs of the raw materials to customers, high inflation wreaks havoc forcing customers to slash their purchases and depressing activity through the economy. 
• Asset classes for inflation protection - REITs and TIPs. 
• Commentary for 2020 recession : At the time of this writing, REITs may be risky. As we get more clarity into how shallow/deep this recession is going to be, there is a fair chance that commercial REITs may suffer heavy losses as the lockdown extends as the virus will now spread to new hotspots into the heartland of America. 

A century of stock market history

Coronavirus diaries

This post contains real life stories from people from across the world about how they have been impacted by coronavirus. This may feel depressing to read and some of the accounts are troubling and horrific. Please read at your own discretion. However, all these are real accounts from real people.

May 17

• People going missing from west bengal, india hospitals

March 28

• A tale of two states

March 26

• A choir group had 60 people show up for practice. Now 45 are sick, 27 tested positive and 1 dead.
• Recovery story of a 29 year old 
• Facebook obituary of a person who got coronavirus on a cruise ship

March 24

• Man who lost both his grandparents from coronavirus in 24 hours
• A physician who is self isolating from her kids, watches them from the window
• A urge from a mother who lost her 21 year daughter to take this virus seriously

March 21

• 42 year male on horrific account of how he felt through the coronavirus sickness

March 20

• Story of a nurse talking to his children from 20 feet

March 18

• We are 7 to 10 days ahead of you America - a post from western washington

March 13

• Story of a mom who is with her baby with asthma in the ICU
• A doctor's plea from San Francisco
• Seattle area hospital suspends elective surgeries and is down to 4 days of gloves supply

March 9

• A doctor's report from Italy when the hospitals in Lombardy were beginning to get overwhelmed
• This is a post for my family and friends outside Italy 

March 8

• Seattle woman who survived coronavirus shares her story

Online courses for engineers interested in management

1. Writing skills for engineering leaders - coursera
2. Self awareness and the effective leader - coursera
3. Personal Leadership development planning and leading high performance teams - coursera
4. 
   

Coronavirus - Events

March 30

• US stock future falter, Oil trades at 18 year low - goes below 20$ 
• Trump extends Coronavirus guidelines till April 30, targets to keep US death toll below 100k
• Bend it like the bay area. 30 days after publication of Coronavirus in the bay area and 2 weeks after lockdown, bay area curve looks like flattening. Things could change anytime, cautiously positive
• 

March 27

• President Trump signs 2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill
• US cases top 100k
• California bans evictions
• India declares relief package worth 22.5 billion dollars

March 26

• India declares country wide lockdown - worlds largest coronavirus lockdown
• Spain becomes Italy, spanish doctors are forced to choose who to let die

March 25

• Wells Fargo, Citi, JPMorgan, and US Bank have agreed to a 90 day grace period for mortgage payments for those impacted by Covid-19 in california
• Bay area public schools extend temporary school closures to May 4
• Spain's death toll surpasses China after biggest one day jump

March 23

• Central banks to purchase unlimited amounts of treasuries
• This was the fastest 30% selloff ever exceeding the pace of the great depression
• Coronavirus cases top 20000 in New York with 12000 cases in NYC
• Italy coronavirus deaths slow for second day in a row

March 21

• FDA grants emergency use coronavirus test that can grant results in 45 minutes

March 20

• Italy death toll rises by 546 in a day and stands at highest in the world

March 19

• California wide shelter in place order - https://www.facebook.com/GavinNewsom/posts/10158296906323117 
• Coronavirus : The Hammer and Dance

March 18

• ECB to launch 750 billion bond buying program
• Another day of trading halt - investors sell everything
• President Trump signs coronavirus relief plan to expand paid leave

March 17

• European Union leaders agree to close borders for 30 days
• Beijing kicks out US journalists

March 16

• Dow suffers worst single day fall since 1987 Black Monday
• Amazon to hire 100k more delivery workers and give raises to current staff amid coronavirus demand
• Order of the health officer for the county of santa clara
• Bay Area officials issue stay at home order

March 15(Sunday)

• Stocks and Bond yields slide after Fed cuts interest rates to 0
• UK also added to US travel suspension list

March 13

• US declares national emergency as coronavirus reaches 44 states
• S&P500 rises 9.29% on Friday
• Dairy of a crazy week in markets
• US Coronavirus cases reach 2000 and growing

March 12

• CNN Global Coronavirus townhall - all the news go mainstream
• Stocks plunge 10% in worst fall of the Dow since 1987

March 11

• India suspends all tourist visas
• US suspends all travel from Europe

March 10

• Act today of people will die note shared 
• Italian healthcare swamped

March 9

March 8

• Recession note shared on siliconvalleystories
• Flatten the Curve note shared on silicon valley stories

March 7

• Murphy's law of retirement shared

March 5

• The black swan of 2020
• California orders insurers to waive out of pocket costs for coronavirus testing

March 1

• Coronavirus in the bay area

Coronavirus is far worse than you think

If you are not worried yet or dont think that you are old enough that Coronavirus will affect you, you are being irresponsible 

Two facts

1. China didnt build a hospital in 10 days for nothing
2. Italy didnt quarantine the whole nation and stop the country for simple reasons

These are unprecedented events in history

Here is some news about how things are playing out elsewhere

1. War like situation in Italy - they have to chose who to let live and who to die
2. A doctor's take from Italy about how hospitals are being transformed

Facts

1. A very detailed analysis of the outbreak and exponential growth across countries
2. CNN townhall - this is all on mainstream media now

For young people who think that they are less likely to get it and be fine even if they do, upto 20% of young people who get coronavirus could still die

Hope

1. Flatten the curve
2. This is how COVID-19 is growing and this is what exponential growth looks like

Healthcare crisis - Global Recession 2020

This time it is different.
2000 - we had the tech bubble burst
2008 - we had the housing crisis which led to financial crisis
2020 - we will have the healthcare crisis which will lead to a financial crisis

Here are the factors playing into the recession

1. Healthcare crisis due to Coronavirus will impact ~10% of the world population
2. Supply side pressure due to reduced workforce, factory shutdowns due to coronavirus
3. Business and pleasure travel will reduce by 80% due to coronavirus scare
4. Demand side pressure 
5. Coronavirus will become a global epidemic
6. The world is already slow to react and has lost valuable time to prevent this crisis
7. Supply and demand side shocks will take at least two quarters and will lead to quarter over quarter contraction
8. Oil prices will drop precipitously due to supply and demand shock
9. Situation may be exacerbated by health crisis -> job loss -> insurance loss -> financial loss -> depression -> health loss. This could be a vicious loop. 

Trends

1. This will lead to new work from home trends and companies that support it
2. Several startups which have been fueled by cheap capital in the past decade will have a existential crisis and will need to expedite path to profitability
3. Steep valuation cuts in travel stocks - it is bad, it will get much worse before it gets better

References

1. Coronavirus - the blackswan of 2020

Coronavirus - Flatten the curve

Is America headed down Italy's path ? Italy healthcare system is crashing !! 

This is an example of what the situation in Italy looks like. 
This is what we can do

Context

I published a post 1 week back(on March 1) claiming that California Coronavirus cases will go from 0->100 in a week(by March 8). I also published another post comparing this Coronavirus situation to a "Black Swan Event". Needless to say that it has happened. I am very sad that some of the predictions came true because this involves some ones wife/husband/son/daughter that fell sick. I am super sad and more worried about the one that did not.

Recap :

1. 100 cases in california - True (currently 105)
2. Clusters of infected areas evolve - True (King County in Seattle, Santa Clara in bay area, NYC are all clusters)
3. Some town in the west coast gets quarantined - False

What is the goal of this post? 

I can make further predictions from hereon

1. Santa Clara county in Bay area alone will have 100 cases by next week given it has 25 now
2. UK will cross 500 cases by next week given it has 200 cases at the time of this writing
3. NYC will have 400 cases by next week
4. Washington will have 500 cases by next week
5. California will have 400 cases by next week

I hope you all understood what exponential growth looks like. 

This post is not about further predictions that went right. It is about the prediction that did not go right - some town in the west coast gets quarantined. Why did I get it wrong and what should be our way at preventing this catastrophe. But before we get there, lets see how this week went and some disclaimers.

What is explicitly not the goal of this post?

The goal is not to create panic. I strongly believe that when it comes to public health, honesty is better than hope. 

Disclaimers

Like I wrote in my last post, these are not my employers views. I am no expert in biology or rather in anything. I think nobody knows what is going on right now. I know a thing or two about startups and have seen some hockey stick curves in the past. That said, there are lot of false news on the internet. Use your judgement. Don't use this post or anything on my blog for any material decision in your life before doing your due diligence. 

How did the week go and what did I learn ? 

On March 1, I claimed in my blog that Coronavirus is growing exponentially with a CFR(Case Fatality of 3.4%)  and I urged people to take this seriously and WFH,not take trains, avoid public gatherings, etc to protect themselves, their families and their community. This blog has been widely shared after that and lot of the readers have taken some of this to heart. I am overwhelmed by your response. This post is for those people. This is for those who fought back when some one said "this is just a flu", "only the old or people with underlying conditions are dying".

Learnings and worries

1. At the time of that writing, I was not completely aware how ill-prepared the CDC was and that they were testing 100 people per day. UWash has come up with new testing kits in the mean time which are testing samples at ~7% on average. But we are still far from full testing capacity across the US. This is the biggest point of concern.  In last 10 days Italy diagnosed 95% of total cases they now report; South Korea 85%. 2 weeks ago, Italy had just 9 cases. 7 weeks ago, China reported 50 cases. The point: once the epidemics are discovered, they’ve been underway. I fear we will find a lot more cases in the US in the coming week, hoping that we raise our game in testing. I just hope that the US learns and can turn this graph around. 
2. Past recessions have looked like Financial Loss -> Job Loss -> Depression -> Health Loss. This time, it may be different. It may look like Health Loss due to coronavirus -> Depression -> Job Loss -> Healthcare loss -> Financial Loss. Basically, things may happen in the reverse order. Given American's have no sick leaves and a lot of them are underinsured or dependent on their job for insurance, they are the most vulnerable. 
3. If you had a hard time understanding what exponential growth looks like from my post, here is a much more explicit breakdown. The calculations may be off by days or weeks, but hope you get the point about why this discussion is so important for public health.
4. India is right in the early phases of the spread and it is home to more than a billion people. I am very worried at this stage about how things will pan out in the next 2 weeks. I hope to be wrong, but if India also reaches 100 cases by next week, things could get really bad. 

Recommendations

1. As you may have heard Italy is about to quarantine 10 million people in Lombardy. At this point our goal should be to reduce the total number of cases at the peak of the epidemic. Besides quarantine, there are several measures : reduce public transport, cancel public events, stop non-essential travel, stop gyms, move schools to online classes being some. Here are the CDC guidelines on preventing community spread. 
2. Our healthcare system is going through a denial of service (DOS) attack. This is what delaying/reducing it may look like from the economist
3. 
4. This is the first epidemic that the world is facing in the time of social media. Some social/medical/mental health implications beyond the disease from Ground Zero in China .

A chart from how the situation in italy looks like

Some other readings 

1. Why soap works well against viruses ?

Hope

1. The fact that some of the companies have declared WFH, lot of the companies have cancelled conferences are a positive step towards reducing that R0 and reducing that spread. We need to aggressively quarantine cities and reduce that R0 and reduce the load on the healthcare system to mitigate the disease. I dont want to introduce complacency in this post, this is as bad as it gets.
2. I hope some of the secondary predictions I make here in the post are actually wrong and the government can mitigate using some of the strategies mentioned here.