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Roll eyes. I'm sorry but this is a ridiculous idea. I can see potential use for this once or twice a year, and even at that I wouldn't reach out to anyone unles

Roll eyes. I'm sorry but this is a ridiculous idea. I can see potential use for this once or twice a year, and even at that I wouldn't reach out to anyone unless I know them personally. How insecure and in need of validation someone needs to be to seek career advice from a chatbot four times a month?

Rmilb 9y ago
I think impostor syndrome can be a huge self imposed mental barrier for some software devs. Unsure on the right price point to help over come it.
- wangarific 9y ago
  It's a huge mental barrier for a lot of people... but can it overcome by talking to something you know is a bot?
  - lazyasciiart 9y ago
    People are willing to accept talking to a rubber duck can be helpful, why not a bot?
  - lucasmullens 9y ago
    Where does it say this is a bot? To me it looks like it's human coaches who use AI to quickly find answers. Maybe they're doing Facebook's approach of slowly replacing humans with bots, but for right now they seem to be human. Edit: saw another comment by from Boost, they're doing Facebook's approach.
  - petergatsby 9y ago
    Boost is _not_ a bot -- it's a team of AI-enhanced, real-life career coaches. Think Facebook's M.
skylark 9y ago
My gut reaction was the same as yours because I would personally never use a service like this. That said, the existence of career consultants proves that there are people who do enjoy this sort of advice and direction. I don't see this becoming a unicorn startup, but I could see it becoming a niche service that some people really enjoy.
- sjg007 9y ago
  It's basically applied psychology right.. understanding motivations, your situation etc.. C level execs hire said consultants or have a psychologist on staff. It's nice to see the democratize. Hopefully it can help people.
ztratar 9y ago
Hey! Founder & CEO here. Love the emotional response. Hey -- some people have to think it's incredibly stupid for it to be a good idea, right? #vclogic ;) Anyways, we don't see this as just an advisor/coach that you use once or twice a year. That's thinking by the old school rules of how career coaches work. But Boost is very, very different. The vast majority of our users use Boost to analyze internal workplace situations, such as those dealing with politics or trying to climb the ladder. Many users do this weekly, when they get new communications that confuse them and they want to ensure they put their best foot forward. We started the company as an advice-giving system for those during job hunts, but found nearly everyone should have been talking to us 3-6 months before they were switching. Most people don't have online brands that exude quality, they don't land speaking engagements, they don't push themselves to hit goals, and much more. The people who push, have constant feedback, and have social accountability end up achieving much more. They gain an edge over the people who only "need advice once or twice a year." Tighter feedback loops = faster learning, which equates to faster career growth. ---- Oh, and it's not a chatbot. Think of it more like Facebook M -- we have a full-time staff of career coaches who ensure every conversation is of the absolute quality. As of right now our chatbot tech is exceedingly limited and we're prioritizing quality over scale.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  So you have a team of insulated Silicon Valley scalleywags that are going to help _me_ with my job in another reasonable part of the country? Unlikely. Cmon, we all know the bourgeois hipsters giving advice to normal people is like throwing a subway sandwich to ducks in a pond.
  - ztratar 9y ago
    We are aware of bubbles and are proud to say we help people across many different industries and socio-economic statuses.
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      But what are you doing about your bubble? The bubble that colors your bias on what makes good career advice? That's what the parent was talking about and you talked straight past him. That doesn't bode well for your bot's performance! I don't think this is the right format, but I do think computer-assisted political strategy is an interesting prospect. The problem with trusting other humans for political advice is that you can't know how much their own political ambitions play in, but the bot is really just once-removed from the people who made it, so the issue of human meddling is not entirely out of the picture. It would need to be very transparent, explicit, and clear to be trustworthy, and preferably highly tunable. How are you ensuring that your bot is providing a valuable, localized analysis for the person asking for advice? If Boost tells me to do something that would get me promoted in California but fired in Boston, who's liable? What kind of cultural accounting is performed? Can I adjust it based on the political/cultural leanings and backgrounds of my subordinates, peers, and superiors? Also, politics depends heavily on unpredictability. You almost need a reverse bot, telling you the worst solution, so that your political enemies don't accurately predict your moves and set traps. Does Boost have a "surprise" mode?
mej10 9y ago
Fortunately for this company not everyone is so self-important that they think an AI-enhanced coach couldn't help them.
developer2 9y ago
>> How insecure and in need of validation someone needs to be to seek career advice from a chatbot four times a month? Let me rephrase that: "How long does one need to go without finding a job - perhaps any job, or one that is satisfying, or that pays well - before one seeks career advice from a chatbot?" I have been fortunate with my career opportunities; your dismissive tone tells me you've also never truly struggled. Not everyone is in the same boat. Some go for years unemployed, or are stuck in a spiral of being paid far below market salary. I can understand why some people might be attracted to this service. That said, I have some criticism for this business: 1. Your market isn't large enough. Those who would find this the most useful are unemployed, and cannot afford to pay. This will hold back growth more than anything - your best customers are those you cannot acquire. This leaves people who already have successful careers, and are only looking for an edge to improve their success the next time they are job hunting, or to "game" their current employer. I imagine the number of people in this category to be far less numerous. 2. From the home page: "A team of career coaches, industry experts & AI". Sorry, we're not naive. With that misleading phrasing, I'm almost certain that the "career coaches and industry experts" are never personally in contact with the customers. You simply trained the AI with their input, and these professionals are not on board to personally assist anyone. You're selling the AI rather than personal advisers, paying a modest fee to curate content instead of matching people with human beings who can offer informed advice. That is the real shame here: marketing "career coaches" and "industry expects", while that is a half-truth. Artificial intelligence as it exists today is not good enough for one-on-one coaching. For a service this important, where people are hanging their hopes and dreams of a career on the line, only an expert in the field is capable of tailoring their advice to each client in a way that is appropriate - perhaps even moral. 3. Regarding the "AI" (too many companies claim to have real artificial intelligence, when all they have is a precomputed index of lookup terms), I bet that the database is extremely generic. If you are looking for advice on the interview process, you would get similar information by Googling for interview tips. The odds that you can narrow the context down to get at information that is specifically tailored to your exact situation, rather than a generic scenario that matches problems facing the majority of the population, is slim. This service is likely nothing more than a search engine for curated content related to career advice - with a bit of interface design sugar making it seem more like a conversation than a search result.

Rmilb 9y ago

I think impostor syndrome can be a huge self imposed mental barrier for some software devs. Unsure on the right price point to help over come it.

wangarific 9y ago
It's a huge mental barrier for a lot of people... but can it overcome by talking to something you know is a bot?
- lazyasciiart 9y ago
  People are willing to accept talking to a rubber duck can be helpful, why not a bot?
- lucasmullens 9y ago
  Where does it say this is a bot? To me it looks like it's human coaches who use AI to quickly find answers. Maybe they're doing Facebook's approach of slowly replacing humans with bots, but for right now they seem to be human. Edit: saw another comment by from Boost, they're doing Facebook's approach.
- petergatsby 9y ago
  Boost is _not_ a bot -- it's a team of AI-enhanced, real-life career coaches. Think Facebook's M.

skylark 9y ago

My gut reaction was the same as yours because I would personally never use a service like this. That said, the existence of career consultants proves that there are people who do enjoy this sort of advice and direction. I don't see this becoming a unicorn startup, but I could see it becoming a niche service that some people really enjoy.

sjg007 9y ago
It's basically applied psychology right.. understanding motivations, your situation etc.. C level execs hire said consultants or have a psychologist on staff. It's nice to see the democratize. Hopefully it can help people.

ztratar 9y ago

Hey! Founder & CEO here. Love the emotional response. Hey -- some people have to think it's incredibly stupid for it to be a good idea, right? #vclogic ;) Anyways, we don't see this as just an advisor/coach that you use once or twice a year. That's thinking by the old school rules of how career coaches work. But Boost is very, very different. The vast majority of our users use Boost to analyze internal workplace situations, such as those dealing with politics or trying to climb the ladder. Many users do this weekly, when they get new communications that confuse them and they want to ensure they put their best foot forward. We started the company as an advice-giving system for those during job hunts, but found nearly everyone should have been talking to us 3-6 months before they were switching. Most people don't have online brands that exude quality, they don't land speaking engagements, they don't push themselves to hit goals, and much more. The people who push, have constant feedback, and have social accountability end up achieving much more. They gain an edge over the people who only "need advice once or twice a year." Tighter feedback loops = faster learning, which equates to faster career growth. ---- Oh, and it's not a chatbot. Think of it more like Facebook M -- we have a full-time staff of career coaches who ensure every conversation is of the absolute quality. As of right now our chatbot tech is exceedingly limited and we're prioritizing quality over scale.

goldenkey 9y ago
So you have a team of insulated Silicon Valley scalleywags that are going to help _me_ with my job in another reasonable part of the country? Unlikely. Cmon, we all know the bourgeois hipsters giving advice to normal people is like throwing a subway sandwich to ducks in a pond.
- ztratar 9y ago
  We are aware of bubbles and are proud to say we help people across many different industries and socio-economic statuses.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    But what are you doing about your bubble? The bubble that colors your bias on what makes good career advice? That's what the parent was talking about and you talked straight past him. That doesn't bode well for your bot's performance! I don't think this is the right format, but I do think computer-assisted political strategy is an interesting prospect. The problem with trusting other humans for political advice is that you can't know how much their own political ambitions play in, but the bot is really just once-removed from the people who made it, so the issue of human meddling is not entirely out of the picture. It would need to be very transparent, explicit, and clear to be trustworthy, and preferably highly tunable. How are you ensuring that your bot is providing a valuable, localized analysis for the person asking for advice? If Boost tells me to do something that would get me promoted in California but fired in Boston, who's liable? What kind of cultural accounting is performed? Can I adjust it based on the political/cultural leanings and backgrounds of my subordinates, peers, and superiors? Also, politics depends heavily on unpredictability. You almost need a reverse bot, telling you the worst solution, so that your political enemies don't accurately predict your moves and set traps. Does Boost have a "surprise" mode?

mej10 9y ago

Fortunately for this company not everyone is so self-important that they think an AI-enhanced coach couldn't help them.

developer2 9y ago

>> How insecure and in need of validation someone needs to be to seek career advice from a chatbot four times a month? Let me rephrase that: "How long does one need to go without finding a job - perhaps any job, or one that is satisfying, or that pays well - before one seeks career advice from a chatbot?" I have been fortunate with my career opportunities; your dismissive tone tells me you've also never truly struggled. Not everyone is in the same boat. Some go for years unemployed, or are stuck in a spiral of being paid far below market salary. I can understand why some people might be attracted to this service. That said, I have some criticism for this business: 1. Your market isn't large enough. Those who would find this the most useful are unemployed, and cannot afford to pay. This will hold back growth more than anything - your best customers are those you cannot acquire. This leaves people who already have successful careers, and are only looking for an edge to improve their success the next time they are job hunting, or to "game" their current employer. I imagine the number of people in this category to be far less numerous. 2. From the home page: "A team of career coaches, industry experts & AI". Sorry, we're not naive. With that misleading phrasing, I'm almost certain that the "career coaches and industry experts" are never personally in contact with the customers. You simply trained the AI with their input, and these professionals are not on board to personally assist anyone. You're selling the AI rather than personal advisers, paying a modest fee to curate content instead of matching people with human beings who can offer informed advice. That is the real shame here: marketing "career coaches" and "industry expects", while that is a half-truth. Artificial intelligence as it exists today is not good enough for one-on-one coaching. For a service this important, where people are hanging their hopes and dreams of a career on the line, only an expert in the field is capable of tailoring their advice to each client in a way that is appropriate - perhaps even moral. 3. Regarding the "AI" (too many companies claim to have real artificial intelligence, when all they have is a precomputed index of lookup terms), I bet that the database is extremely generic. If you are looking for advice on the interview process, you would get similar information by Googling for interview tips. The odds that you can narrow the context down to get at information that is specifically tailored to your exact situation, rather than a generic scenario that matches problems facing the majority of the population, is slim. This service is likely nothing more than a search engine for curated content related to career advice - with a bit of interface design sugar making it seem more like a conversation than a search result.