This could well be to help prevent sms pumping — where someone makes money by receiving smss to a particular set of numbers. Requiring the user to first send an sms breaks the economics that type of fraud.
I do like watching these comparisons however it reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my 10 year old.
Son: Why does the croissant cost €2.80 here while it's only €0.45 in Lidl? Who would buy that?
Me: You're not paying for the croissant, you're paying for the staff to give it to you, for the warm café, for the tables to be cleaned and for the seat to sit on.
[edit: I retract my comment that it's bad advice to not cancel holidays to work hard. I misread the comment that I replied to -- I had thought the commenter was saying don't work extra hard in your role as it's never worth it. That's not what the commenter said though. In my experience, people who produce more value in the world are more valuable and get rewarded more than those who don't.]
I think this is poor and dangerous advice for anyone who wants to get ahead in life. If you are happy to coast by and not achieve much in life, sure, don’t work hard. But if you want to be one of the few who either rise to the top in your field or to create value in the world, then don’t feel bad about wanting to work hard. People generally learn by doing and those who do a lot learn a lot.
Of course, don’t prioritize it over things that are important to you (physical health, family etc) but don’t feel it’s wrong to prioritize it above stuff isn’t important to you (eg Netflix and YouTube shorts).
Unicorn tech founder here.
Google — if you are reading, it’s stories like this and examples where you c.10x the price of products overnight like Google Maps that I would never let our team use GCP. Your reputation is losing you business here.