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What one thing has your career taught you for certain?

Sean Kernan, Son of Quora

Over and over again, I see people in corner offices who, on paper, are of pretty mediocre intelligence.

If they were pitted against you on an academic test, most of you smart Quorans would best them fairly easily.

And you know what?

It means nothing.

The moment you step out of academia and into the office, nothing you did in school matters anymore.

Your SAT score.

Your board rankings.

Your perfect grades.

They evaporate. Gone. They were the price of entry.

Being smart certainly matters. It helps.

But the longer you spend in the business world, the less you’ll see success manifesting itself as a product of smarts.

You’ll someday realize that it was always just a contest of who wanted it the most.

Which fruits should I stay away from?

Kurt Hadsall, Oilfield Wireline Field Specalist at Baker Hughes (2003-present)

My former career was retail grocer/produce manager. For over fifteen years I enjoyed the very best produce, because I had “pick of the litter” as the saying goes. I still to this day am very picky about produce.

Fruits are mostly seasonal. Apples, pears and citrus Fall/Winter. Berries and grapes Spring, and Soft fruit/melons Summer.

Transportation and processing of fresh food has improved and we are able to import more fruit from South America and beyond.

You still won’t find me eating warehouse apples in the summer or peaches, plums or melons from South America in the winter.

Picked early enough to extend shipment and warehousing time means, lack of flavor and or downright spoiling because ripening never happens.

Hybrids, crossbred and genetically modified strains of fruits and vegetables can be the exception to this in that they taste good, hold up better until eaten and can be grown in regions not native to their natural cousins.

A couple of examples that I enjoy are Fuji apples and Hothouse tomatoes harvested and sold still on the vine.

When shopping inspect, examine, observe, ask for a sample, read the stickers and boxes. Look, taste and smell, the nose knows.

No matter what fruit you reach for make sure to rinse throughly and it will be much better for you than Micky D’s or processed foods.

Hope this helps!

What are some of the greatest things humans have achieved that most people don’t know about?

Andrew Grimm

Ever wondered why the world was basically the Middle East and the tropics for many generations and then some people moved to the colder places like Europe and such?

I have an answer and its one you probably didn’t expect.

Hay.

yes, that dry bundle of grass that most farmers now take for granted is one of the most important reasons why people were able to move into colder climates.

You see, hay is durable dry feed for animals during the winter months (especially horses), and before that, if you moved to the colder areas, you may have had yourself to feed, but you couldn’t run any livestock.

Hay changed all that.

From the period when Hay was first cultivated and used, this enabled people to finally travel to some of the much colder climates and actually last through more than a single winter without preserves and pickles.

Freeman Dyson:

"My suggestion is not original. I don't remember who gave me the idea, but it was probably Lynn White, with Murray Gell-Mann as intermediary. The most important invention of the last two thousand years was hay. In the classical world of Greece and Rome and in all earlier times, there was no hay. Civilization could exist only in warm climates where horses could stay alive through the winter by grazing. Without grass in winter you could not have horses, and without horses you could not have urban civilization. Some time during the so-called dark ages, some unknown genius invented hay, forests were turned into meadows, hay was reaped and stored, and civilization moved north over the Alps. So hay gave birth to Vienna and Paris and London and Berlin, and later to Moscow and New York."

So the next time you visit a major European city and look around at its 500 plus year magnificence .. you can thank the use of Hay on a regular basis for that.

What seemingly strange question will reveal a lot about a person?

Paul Barends, lives in The Netherlands

Well, once during a job interview I was asked a strange question.

This was in the 1980s when unemployment was high. A small company advertised a sales position in a local newspaper. It wasn’t clear what they actually sold and I didn’t have much experience, but it was close to where I lived, so I applied by letter anyway, and to my surprise was invited for an interview.

The strange question must have at least revealed I was paying attention, because my immediate response was, “Why would you ask me such a question?”

“It reveals a lot about a person I’ve learned,” the business owner replied.

At that age I was totally unprepared. I was ready to explain sales strategies.

So I needed a moment. My first thought was that this might be an indirect way to learn about the religious convictions of a person, and that this might be a secret demand.

Still I managed to come up with a coherent answer, but I don’t recall what I actually said.

He had originally asked me, “What do you think the purpose of life is?” and that question definitely caught me off guard.

Eventually I didn’t get the job, which wasn’t a big deal. However I’ve always kept wondering whether the question was asked because of his religious beliefs, or that it was in fact an assessment relevant to sales positions.

Either way, the answer to such a question is always revealing.

Smart people: seriously, why aren't you breeding?

Blake Senftner, Mad computer scientist

Two reasons:

My “smartness” comes with a giant helping of anxiety, which I do not want to pass on. I suspect it’s genetic.

I feel like it is unethical to bring children into today’s world.

Plus, to have kids today, they are not yours , they are “owned” by society. Unless you can live/work at home and raise them with your interpersonal influences more than the influences of our popular and social media, your kids are imprints of society more than they are imprints of you and your values. And the values of our society are immature, short sighted, unrealistic, overall pretty bad…

What are some unspoken rules in the U.K.?

Graham Short, Micro-artist, Supplier to the Royal Household,

When you park your car in the street close to the football ground and a local urchin asks for a fiver to look after your car… pay him! If you tell him, “There’s no need, I’ve got an Alsation in the boot,” don’t be surprised if you hear him say, as you walk away, “I bet he can’t put out fires.”

When watching the Jeremy Kyle Show you must always say,”Why don’t these people get their teeth fixed.”

When David Walliams comes on the TV, it is compulsory to say, “I can’t stand him, he’s creepy.”

When speaking to a Brummie, if you haven’t got the sheet music you will never understand him.

When the ad comes on TV and comedienne Jenny Eclair asks, “Have you got a bothersome vagina?” Don’t look at your mother, mother-in-law or granny. Keep your eyes fixed on your newspaper and pretend you haven’t heard it.

If you are a young slim woman, you must regularly visit the food store, Iceland. You will feel soooo good when you look around at those who shop there.

When you see a morbidly obese woman in the street wearing a tracksuit, never ask, “Are you on your way to the gym?”

What are the dirty little secrets of the stock market?

Carl Heintz, CPA, MBA, CEA, started, built, sold numerous successful businesses

What follows may be shocking, but it is true.

The market is “rigged” for small traders. The big boys have insider information and trade on it all the time. Ok, maybe not insider information like the SEC defines it, but if you rub shoulders with people on a daily basis, you pick up things that allow you to do things that strangers may not be aware of. The stock markets are cozy little markets.

Most of the trading is done by computers, following algorithms. Yes, you as an individual are competing with an AI driven machine.

Most financial statements by public companies are not accurate. Ok, maybe they “fairly present” the results of operations, but there is a tremendous amount of “massaging” of the data that goes on behind the scenes. Some of it falls within the legal, some of it borders on unethical.

A small investor cannot compete with big investors on a short time frame. If you are clever, do your research, you can do well, but it takes a lot of time and effort, skepticism and insight. Daytraders are gamblers and typically have the same results as those who frequent the casinos.

Stock brokers, financial advisors, financial planners and the like are for the most part sales people. Beware.

What are some jobs that surprisingly pay over $1,000,000 a year?

Michael Cheng, Worked several years at a small VC and an investment bank.

Originally Answered: What are achievable jobs that pay a million a year?

In the world of real estate, lots of people in various roles make a million dollars a year.

Almost no one has a job that pays a million a year, given what real estate professionals know about available favorable tax treatments in real estate.

Loan officers or brokers, real estate brokers, contractors, flippers, appraisers, and even property inspectors can make a million bucks or more each year, all through handling some aspect of real estate.

Some of the roles require licenses, but many do not. Many just have a college degree and some may not have even graduated high school, just vocational school, especially for the contracting trades. For example, my elevator guy bills at $392 an hour and he rounds up to the nearest hour, so he often bills at a higher rate than my fancy lawyers from Harvard.

My commercial property inspector charges $8–10K for a two hour inspection and he averages an inspection a day. No license required.

Many of these roles don't require much formal education, just a willingness to work hard. The work itself isn't particularly challenging and you don't need a specialized talent or be able to put a ball in the right spot fifty feet away.

Indeed, one of my loan officers clears $1.5M a year in commissions, and he admits he doesn't do much more than punch in a few numbers to pull up current mortgage rates and send out a few emails a day with pre-approvals. He is on the phone a lot, discussing rates and terms. But, the bulk of the actual grunt work in completing and closing the loan is handled by his assistants, who only get paid a couple of pennies by the bank compared to his rate.

It can be a tedious grind, but for the money, it's not so bad. For anyone willing to work, it's a very achievable result. Getting started is often as simple as pulling up the licensing requirements on the appropriate state board website, fulfilling the course requirements, and getting the license in a few months. Of course, most people looking for a million dollars a year won't even do that, so there remains plenty of roles which keep paying out that well.

How do you spot a beginner manager?

Yariv Adan, works at Google Assistant

Trying to be involved in everything that is happening in his team

Feels uncomfortable delagating

Over indexes project development over people development

Way too high "answers and directives to questions and challenges" ratio (towards his team)

Generally overwhelmed and defensive

Uncalibrated in people's performance management - usually scoring all her people as strong performers

Overworking the team (often through setting an example), and being proud of it

Doesn't know how to manage low performers, hesitant to provide constructive feedback

Says "I" and "my" when talking about the team

Way too focused on the layer below and layer above, and misses the bigger picture of the teams and organization around, and how her team fits there

What's the most ridiculously simple idea that made someone rich?

Christopher Chong, studied at London Business School

Arguably the richest family in the world are the Rothschilds. Their exact wealth is unknown but some have speculated that it could be as much as $2 trillion (unlikely but it is likely to be a large number). The founder of the Rothschild wealth was Mayer Rothschild (1744–1812), an orphan at 12 but brought up in an extended family living in what was then the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt. To understand what Mayer did that was so simple and so brilliant, one needs to understand the history of banking.

The idea of taking gold or money (deposits) and then re-lending them to another party is ancient. In Europe, it was already well established by the Medici (1397) and others (eg Bardi & Peruzzi families). Banking is what we called an intermediation exercise. The bank is the intermediary taking the money and then lending it out. So and regardless of how the lending goes, the depositor can always go after the bank.

Mayer had two ideas - why could his bank not have other branches or banks in other countries and why could he not invest directly the money instead of lending it (disintermediation). Mayer lived in a time of turmoil and change. But he also had luck. In 1769 he became the Court Factor (the modern day equivalent would be the head of the Federal Reserve and the CEO of JP Morgan rolled into one) and later confidante of Crown Prince Wilhelm (became Wilhelm IX, Landgraf of Hesse-Kassel, 1785), the richest man in Europe. Levering on this, and the fact that he had 5 sons and 5 daughters, he sent his sons to various cities (Naples, Vienna, Paris and London) to establish branches of the family bank. By doing so he created the first bank to transcend borders - the first international bank. The Rothschild’s used what was then the most extensive network of carrier pigeons to communicate with each other. As a result, the Rothschild’s benefited very significantly from the French revolution, a pan-continental social explosion, as they were the only bank that could lend and supply armies in several countries. As a result, the largest army in Europe at that time - the Austrian army - gave the Rothschilds the exclusive right to supply the whole army.

Mayer only tinkered with his second idea and it took his son, Nathan (1777-1836), to really develop it. Nathan invited depositors to back him into industrial ventures and by doing so crystallized his father’s idea into what we now know as private equity investing. His timing was impeccable as it was the start of the industrial revolution. It is no understatement to say that the Rothchild’s financed that revolution. But Nathan also did far more ambitious things. He helped fund the newly created Kingdom of Belgium (1830) in return for the Almadén mines in Spain. This gave him a monopoly in mercury, which was then used to refine gold and silver. This, in turn, resulted in NM Rothschild & Sons producing gold and silver for the Bank of England.

Two simple but, in their time, radical ideas that were so very right for that rapidly changing period of history.