The likelihood function returns a probability. Specifically it tells you, for some parametric model, how the joint probability of the data in your data set varies as a function of changing the parameters in the model.
If that sentence doesn't make sense, then it's helpful to just write out the likelihood function. You will notice that that it is in fact just the joint probability density of your model.
The only thing that makes it a "likelihood function" is that you fix the data and vary the parameters, whereas normally probability is a function of the data.
I do think this could be true. Your productivity is way more visible in a small company, execs actually know what you’re working on maybe from day-to-day and most definitely week-to-week. Slackers don’t last long and mediocre developers standout, now why they might be perceived as mediocre is another discussion. My first job was at a big corporation (~150,000 employees) and honestly I saw so much politics and fiefdoms and just generally low quality developers not doing much but they could sneak under the radar because they’re a small cog in the apparatus. My next company (~50-60 employees) the devs were definitely better and way more productive, but it also felt very performative/showy environment of what devs did every what and if you were perceived as not doing enough you definitely stood out. It was a very public, perhaps stressful, work environment with demos every 2 weeks.
I was laid off at a small tech company mid July and found another job with a friend at another small company in mid September. I thought maybe I wouldn’t find another job for a while, but it took me about 2 months with a very significant (40%) pay cut. I like the company pretty well, but I’m still hoping for something more. We’ll see.
In my experience, most US tech workers see the non-tech US like most of the US sees the rest of the world: they intellectually understand that they’re a small piece of the pie, but living within an attention and influence bubble subconsciously makes people feel like the center of the universe. This can make average people feel superior and above average people feel exceptional.
Like in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone, where all of the children are above average.
And we're decimating retail through tariffs, we're cutting as many people as we can out of food service, and we're ending much federal funding around education. Doesn't seem great.
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