No, the ~$200 fee was for the book ledger and blank checks. I have no idea what kind of monthly fees the bank was charging for the account. He was also getting raked over the coals on his merchant account to process credit cards because it was deemed a high risk business so most reputable places would not accept the business.
IME (hiring, not interviewing) it's always been 3-4 rounds. First is an HR phone screen (usually 20-30 minutes on the phone), 2nd with hiring manager, 3rd with a senior engineer/architect, and a 4th with the hiring VP. And those are almost always combined into a single morning or afternoon(2+3 or 3+4) and the final round doesn't always happen (VP's choice).
7-9 rounds just means 7-9 conversations. Just talking to a recruiter and the manager are 2 rounds. So 5-7 interviews that evaluate competency. You usually get the lower end unless you ended up giving mixed signals.
Sounds like asking a lot from candidates but unfortunately candidates lie a lot and the cost of hiring candidates that don’t match up to the requirements when paying $300k-$500k/year is just too high. Firing people is hard and takes a long time, especially in management roles. My personal guidance to managers is to have rounds match the level and experience required for the job. You can hire an intern with 2 rounds after the hiring manager conversation but a staff IC probably needs 5, directors need 7.
I'm talking about 7-9 rounds for non tech companies, and each round is at least an hour plus interview. These roles aren't even hitting the $200k marker.
It's an effect of "once burned twice shy". Every time there was a "bad" hire they had to change things. People add to the list but no one ever wants to advocate for a lighter process since they might be blamed for it.
I'd say it's more incompetence than cruelty. People (edit: I mean companies) have options and don't know how to filter, so they just go nuts in the worst possible way.
> AIDE demonstrates that recursive self-improvement at the harness layer can produce transferable gains in an AI research agent’s research efficiency. During the recursive self-improvement run, the loop accepted seven rewrites, each under a fixed evaluation budget (section 3.2). Under this fixed evaluation budget, gains in optimization capability on AI R&D tasks translate to gains in research efficiency."
It feels small to some people in 2026, depending on the business type and the field. Most businesses are small businesses, though. It actually approaches 100%. This is under the SBA's definition as of not long ago. There are limits on earnings, number of employees, or both for what can even be considered a "small business" that vary by industry. They are as low as $9 million revenue or 100 employees, although some industries have much higher ceilings. https://legacy.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/Table%20o...
The average annual revenue of a small business in the US in 2026 is around $1.2 million. The average headcount is about 11 people. About 46% of employees in the US are employed by small businesses. In 2024, about 64% of new jobs were created by small businesses. About 61% of new jobs from 1991 to 2025 were created in small businesses.
Well, commodities are commodities, and it was said it was a niche market. The company itself seems pretty big to me, relatively. $400m in a market of about $2b means they fill a pretty substantial part of the available market.
Sunblock is not supposed to reflect heat (infrared). It's supposed to reflect UV. Different spectrum. Kind of the whole thing the OP was about. I have no idea if sunblock also reflects infrared though, incidentally.
For them, "Winning AI" is effective winning capitalism, winning militarily, and winning the world.
Nothing like "accountability" is going to be allowed to get much in the way of that.
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