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The idea that you shouldn't necessarily expect everyone to stick around long-term is good, though, at least at the ecosystem level, because then you get cross-pollination effects. The opposite model, like Japan's lifetime employment, can easily lead to stagnation.
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Sep 22, 2017 16:09
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Amazon has always had plenty of competitors. There's lots of places on the internet you can get everything Amazon sells. Usually different websites for different products, though. And not usually with user reviews that are allowed to be negative as well as positive so you can figure out the pros and cons of the product.
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Sep 22, 2017 16:10
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yup our two choices are SV darwinism and Japan-style sclerosis
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Sep 22, 2017 16:11
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shrike82 posted:yup our two choices are SV darwinism and Japan-style sclerosis
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Sep 22, 2017 16:15
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Cicero posted:Honestly I don't see a big problem with SV darwinism except for the lack/weakness of safety nets in the US in general.
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Sep 22, 2017 16:17
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yeah oddly enough, a creature like Damore is the end-point of SV wankery rather than some platonic ideal of perfect corporate entities competing with each other in a meritocracy
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Sep 22, 2017 16:20
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Having people stagnate in their position because it's not a good fit or otherwise isn't working out for them isn't at all great for them in the long term either. These are presumably capable people that should be able to find another opportunity relatively easily, so if they do it reasonably (and I have no idea if that's the case in terms of notice, severance, etc), I'd say it's a good approach overall.
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Sep 22, 2017 16:49
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mobby_6kl posted:Having people stagnate in their position because it's not a good fit or otherwise isn't working out for them isn't at all great for them in the long term either. These are presumably capable people that should be able to find another opportunity relatively easily, so if they do it reasonably (and I have no idea if that's the case in terms of notice, severance, etc), I'd say it's a good approach overall. The thing is, nobody was ever fooled by "downsizing" or "rightsizing". We knew exactly what it meant: layoffs, only without the protections afforded to unionized workers. What this dude is doing is firing, and calling it "liberating" may make him able to sleep smugly, but the person getting fired knows exactly what it means.
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Sep 22, 2017 16:53
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Arsenic Lupin posted:What about the early period when they were writing off free shipping as a marketing cost? Er, they didn't have free shipping for most things for quite a while. When they first introduced Free Super Saver Shipping in 2002, you had to spend $99 in an order to get it! It got reduced to $25 an order by the end of the year, but still left a lot of things with no free shipping at all. Still that meant Amazon spent its first 7 years without any free shipping, and once they had it they were dealing in enough volume (and making you buy enough things at once) that it was barely a loss to do it, if at all. There were, IIRC, various special deals between 1995 and 2002 where they'd temporarily do free shipping on select items or days, but it was not something you could rely on, and was more equivalent to having a day with storewide 10% off sales or whatever.
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Sep 22, 2017 16:57
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Arsenic Lupin posted:The thing is, nobody was ever fooled by "downsizing" or "rightsizing". We knew exactly what it meant: layoffs, only without the protections afforded to unionized workers. What this dude is doing is firing, and calling it "liberating" may make him able to sleep smugly, but the person getting fired knows exactly what it means. Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Sep 22, 2017 |
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Sep 22, 2017 19:58
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Gazpacho posted:If Thrun allows doomed employees time to make calls and interview before dropping the ax on them, that puts him ahead of other employers I've worked for, where both sides end up playing bullshit CYA games.
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Sep 22, 2017 20:13
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Was just posting the same thing -- the euphemisms are dumb but if they give a grace period etc. that's what most matters to the employee. Though I'm sure there is some correlation between the euphemisms and just disappearing someone. Why postpone the wonderful "graduation", let's do this!
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Sep 22, 2017 20:16
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Arsenic Lupin posted:There's something I've completely forgotten -- when approximately did the tipover start happening from companies saying "can't use anything open-source, the license has cooties" to open-source being routinely used in production software? My personal opinion is it happened when companies went from selling software to companies (like IBM, HP, etc creating accounting databases for people) to the web where you didn't have to worry about giving away your IP if you sold a hosted solution because you used GPL. Also, it helped when other opensource licenses came out that people could use that didn't involve having to give up any change you made 'cause RMS wanted to fix a printer back in the day.
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Sep 22, 2017 20:59
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Uber lost its license to operate in London https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/...WT.nav=top-news
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Sep 23, 2017 00:11
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i am extremely intelligent
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Sep 23, 2017 01:08
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dangerously intelligent
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Sep 23, 2017 01:10
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for i come armed with the truth: that we know gently caress-all
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Sep 23, 2017 01:10
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Looks like a "tech startup" (really a staffing agency) called "CopsForHire" uncovered some good old-fashioned police corruption in Seattle because some idiot cop couldn't stop bragging about it unprompted: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4057339-SPD-Off-Duty-Notes.html
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Sep 23, 2017 02:22
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Rhesus Pieces posted:Looks like a "tech startup" (really a staffing agency) called "CopsForHire" uncovered some good old-fashioned police corruption in Seattle because some idiot cop couldn't stop bragging about it unprompted: Some kneecaps gonna get broken. 
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Sep 23, 2017 02:31
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Klyith posted:That sounds great but you're using 20/20 hindsight to pick winners between Amazon and Uber. A lot of unicorns fit that pattern. Book value is particularly untrustworthy, Uber's book value is 5 billion or whatever insane number they claim these days. Even if you're not playing games with VC accounting, book value tends to assess intangibles that only hold up if your company is successful. Thats why you read the entire chart of acocunts, not just pick and choose. Note that I certainly didnt just isolate any one partcular thing - but in Amazon's case the book value did stand up because the rest of the accounts also stood up to scrutiny. There wasnt VC accounting going on - it read like you would expect with grown ups in charge. I'm also certainly not hindsighting either, whenever the whole Amazon isnt making money thing came up in it's first couple of years of existance, I always pointed to the accounts and what was really going on (might even be in some of my earlier post history here). Uber's books on the other hand..... yeah those read like poo poo. Amazon and unicorns have always been vastly different for other reason already pointed out but the best one would be simply there was adults in cahrge who set out a proper business plan, there was no missing step then profit BS that unicorns are infested with
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Sep 23, 2017 02:36
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I mean like Uber did start out perfectly fine - they only had a small amount of seed money and their business plan was solidly profitable, since they just acted as an easy booking service for standard, licensed, black cars and a small amount of taxis in the SF area. They went into crazy bullshit land when they started getting more VC and decided they were going to do massive expansion in all directions with it.
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Sep 23, 2017 03:18
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Book value is a pretty bad metric for tech companies, not sure why you're doubling down on it
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Sep 23, 2017 03:24
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uber really should have just sold their software as a service to traditional and new "ridesharing" taxi services on a franchise system. like there'd be an uber bay area, uber los angeles, uber new york etc. each one operating roughly independently so they didn't have to try to straddle ten thousand different regulatory environments with one set of policies. then they wouldn't have acted so much like clumsy assholes making governments mad all over the place by brazenly disregarding local law. also maybe not commit all the shady crimes like industrial espionage and building secret infrastructure to mask your activities from regulatory oversight
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Sep 23, 2017 03:45
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FlamingLiberal posted:Uber lost its license to operate in London quote:Black-cab drivers, who earn licenses by memorizing some 25,000 streets and 100,000 landmarks for an exacting test known as The Knowledge, complain that Uber drivers are under-regulated. Many fear that the rivalry will put them out of business: Uber fares are about 30 percent lower than those of black cabs.
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Sep 23, 2017 04:48
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:I'm also certainly not hindsighting either, whenever the whole Amazon isnt making money thing came up in it's first couple of years of existance, I always pointed to the accounts and what was really going on (might even be in some of my earlier post history here). it's ok, I believe you, don't need to dig through post history. if you were on the money and made bank on amazon stock then you certainly made the right call. quote:Amazon and unicorns have always been vastly different for other reason already pointed out but the best one would be simply there was adults in cahrge who set out a proper business plan, there was no missing step then profit BS that unicorns are infested with I dunno, I still think it's a difference in degree rather than in kind. The essentials is seeing that there's a giant truck of free money (bubble years IPO for amazon, redonkulous VC money for unicorns), then dumping that money into hyper growth above everything. I think the biggest difference is whether your business plan has something below "world-eating giant" to settle for. Amazon still could have been a modest success as the website where you buy books, rather than the goliath everything store. If there's a theme to the current unicorns, it's that most of them are set to world domination or bust. Amazon may have had adults in charge rather than an oversexed libtard bro like Kalanick, but that alone isn't some sort of guarantee. They were still pursuing a pretty risky strategy. I can think of quite a few things that could have derailed amazon pretty badly, completely out of the control of Bezos et al. But none of those things happened.
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Sep 23, 2017 05:25
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i am easily twice the size of any motherfucker itt and i will pulverise you to death between my rear end cheeks like twin granite boulders
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Sep 23, 2017 05:47
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shrike82 posted:We don’t know how to write good software period. Electron makes perfect sense when you already have a working web ui and you would like a native client. It's a bit of a clayton's native client though.
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Sep 23, 2017 05:59
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the old ceremony posted:i am easily twice the size of any motherfucker itt and i will pulverise you to death between my rear end cheeks like twin granite boulders will you take plastic or do we need to pay in goats
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Sep 23, 2017 06:03
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James has since deleted the tweet (how can you even keep the same set of opinions over time if you constantly backpedal on half the statements you make?) but thankfully it's still available... via Google Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0B-kOYRuAkAJ:https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/910547650407055360 Jury's still out on how ironic that is.
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Sep 23, 2017 09:41
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Ruffian Price posted:James has since deleted the tweet (how can you even keep the same set of opinions over time if you constantly backpedal on half the statements you make?) but thankfully it's still available... via Google Cache: [url]https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0B-kOYRuAkAJ:https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/910547650407055360[/url] In online discourse, "ironic" is a synonym for "I'm an rear end in a top hat, I believe what I said, and I want to not be held responsible."
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Sep 23, 2017 17:22
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Ruffian Price posted:James has since deleted the tweet (how can you even keep the same set of opinions over time if you constantly backpedal on half the statements you make?) but thankfully it's still available... via Google Cache: [url]https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0B-kOYRuAkAJ:https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/910547650407055360[/url] nice to see some good ndt tweets for a change
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Sep 23, 2017 17:30
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MALE SHOEGAZE posted:nice to see some good ndt tweets for a change Not him
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Sep 23, 2017 17:54
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blah_blah posted:Not him i cant read
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Sep 23, 2017 18:00
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Irony.or.Death posted:will you take plastic or do we need to pay in goats
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Sep 23, 2017 23:39
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the old ceremony posted:the accepted going rate for a newborn goat where i live seems to be $50 so they're actually quite a handy unit of currency More like a handful unit of currency!
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Sep 24, 2017 00:06
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you seriously cannot imagine how tiny a baby goat is until you've seen one. they were smaller than my dog and he's like, hamster-tier. they quadruple in size over the first month, it's wild
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Sep 24, 2017 00:12
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the old ceremony posted:you seriously cannot imagine how tiny a baby goat is until you've seen one. they were smaller than my dog and he's like, hamster-tier. they quadruple in size over the first month, it's wild If they're so small then I'm not impressed by a quadrupling. Try harder, goats.
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Sep 24, 2017 01:37
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:If they're so small then I'm not impressed by a quadrupling. Try harder, goats.
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Sep 24, 2017 02:20
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Nope. The worst smell is containerized wet salted hides in the summer after an ocean transit. It's worse than burned corpse.
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Sep 24, 2017 02:56
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i'm going to have to take your word for that
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Sep 24, 2017 02:57
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