7 ms·

> The golden dataset everyone wants is the org chart. Who reports to whom. Who is new. Who has been at the company for a while. Find a way to get this data and

by chime 7y ago

> The golden dataset everyone wants is the org chart. Who reports to whom. Who is new. Who has been at the company for a while. Find a way to get this data and sell it to companies. I suspect you’ll have many takers. Please don’t. Please. Really. Please don’t. Training my users to fend off social engineering attacks is hard enough as is. Please don’t use your talents in this way.

wheelerwj 7y ago
This is basic B2B sales....
cubecul 7y ago
The Information is doing this: https://www.theinformation.com/org-charts https://www.theinformation.com/org-charts
- thundergolfer 7y ago
  Interesting, that looks like exactly what they're talking about. Are you a subscriber, and if so how are the charts?
  - tony8000 7y ago
    It's mostly the who reports to whom part and goes about 1 to 4 levels below the CEO.
thestepafter 7y ago
I think this is the exact point of the article. Executives don’t think like you, so if you want to make it big with your software, you have to change how you think. Even if it means annoying middle management and their direct reports.
- trimbo 7y ago
  That might be the point of the article, but the point of the grandparent is that the only method to get this data is to be seedy as hell. And that we should aspire to use our talents for better things.
  - zanny 7y ago
    Better things don't pay, at all. The most betterest things you can do as a developer - make infrastructure that makes other developers more efficient, or invent protocols or fundamentals to build ecosystems and industries on - often you get nothing for it. Because you made it open source, because you wanted it to be useful. But to try to make it proprietary would have been to make it useless. Theres a reason probably 95% of software developers are employed to write redundant repetitive corporate business software over and over and over again. Everything else is being done philanthropically because anyone outside the perview of a budget department at a big co recognizes the value in reaching a consensus solution everyone uses because its a lot of work to make and is good enough. Even corporate-adjacent software like databases, game engines, etc are trending this way - Unreal, Unity, and Godot are all varying degrees of open now in ways engines weren't even a half decade ago. The world is coalescing around Postgres in a way unexpectable a decade ago under the tyranny of SQL Server and Oracle SQL alongside a half dozen "competing" open source databases. Do you think those who contribute the most to Postgres get anything close to "reasonable" compensation for having architected the database engine that is now running likely trillions in business infrastructure and data management? Their software is maximally useful - "the betterest things" - but you can't survive being maximally useful. You have to sacrifice how useful what you make is to not be homeless in 99.99% of cases. You have to make worse, often redundant things, wasting your time and the time of others in the process, because thats the only (feasible and/or reliable) way corporations will pay you to write software.
    - zomglings 7y ago
      Why do we have such an emphasis on making our tools open source? How much does the license matter? Would it be feasible to release source code for inspection while simultaneously retaining exclusive rights to operate the software? Would that garner a negative response from the developer community?
- opportune 7y ago
  I guess the mental calculus depends on how much you value positively impacting society vs just wanting money
Aeolun 7y ago
Huh? I think I’d try to introduce a new trend of putting this info on your business card or something. Trying to gather the info from companies directly doesn’t scale I think.
yellow_lead 7y ago
I could see many reasons a company wouldn't want their org chart public. Employees too. This seems like it could be a privacy issue.
skybrian 7y ago
This seems like a great example of how privacy risks result in conflicts between buyers and sellers. It doesn't seem very surprising that salespeople want it so badly, and also that organizations don't want them to have it. Some parts of the org chart can be inferred from various public data. Is it any wonder that people want to scrape LinkedIn so much?
zomglings 7y ago
Why such a strong reaction against the idea? For someone who has to sell stuff, this would be incredibly valuable if executed well. It's possible to build something like this using only publicly available data about people and organizations. Genuinely curious - where is the ethical problem?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Genuinely curious - where is the ethical problem? Why not sell stuff based on the quality of that stuff? If the stuff is crap, or is a bad fit for the purchaser, but you've managed to sell it anyway thanks to various sales tricks (playing off a company's org chart would be one of such), then you've done an unethical thing. Since buyer's org chart has little to do with quality of your wares and their utility to the buyer, such an org chart spying tool seems to serve only to enable unethical sales behavior.
  - zomglings 7y ago
    It's not about trying to pawn off inferior wares onto your customers. I make a living selling software that I write. My customers have no way of judging quickly how good my software is or even whether it solves their problems. When I'm selling to someone, it is my responsibility to figure out whether or not what I'm selling actually solves their problem. Being able to navigate their organization helps me extract this information more quickly than I would otherwise be able to. It allows me to convince people for whom I'm really solving a problem to try out my solution. It allows me to leave people alone for whom my solution would only add noise.
jmanzy01 7y ago
The Org is already doing this (https://theorg.com/ https://theorg.com/)

by chime 7y ago

wheelerwj 7y ago

This is basic B2B sales....

cubecul 7y ago

The Information is doing this: https://www.theinformation.com/org-charts https://www.theinformation.com/org-charts

thundergolfer 7y ago
Interesting, that looks like exactly what they're talking about. Are you a subscriber, and if so how are the charts?
- tony8000 7y ago
  It's mostly the who reports to whom part and goes about 1 to 4 levels below the CEO.

thestepafter 7y ago

I think this is the exact point of the article. Executives don’t think like you, so if you want to make it big with your software, you have to change how you think. Even if it means annoying middle management and their direct reports.

trimbo 7y ago
That might be the point of the article, but the point of the grandparent is that the only method to get this data is to be seedy as hell. And that we should aspire to use our talents for better things.
- zanny 7y ago
  Better things don't pay, at all. The most betterest things you can do as a developer - make infrastructure that makes other developers more efficient, or invent protocols or fundamentals to build ecosystems and industries on - often you get nothing for it. Because you made it open source, because you wanted it to be useful. But to try to make it proprietary would have been to make it useless. Theres a reason probably 95% of software developers are employed to write redundant repetitive corporate business software over and over and over again. Everything else is being done philanthropically because anyone outside the perview of a budget department at a big co recognizes the value in reaching a consensus solution everyone uses because its a lot of work to make and is good enough. Even corporate-adjacent software like databases, game engines, etc are trending this way - Unreal, Unity, and Godot are all varying degrees of open now in ways engines weren't even a half decade ago. The world is coalescing around Postgres in a way unexpectable a decade ago under the tyranny of SQL Server and Oracle SQL alongside a half dozen "competing" open source databases. Do you think those who contribute the most to Postgres get anything close to "reasonable" compensation for having architected the database engine that is now running likely trillions in business infrastructure and data management? Their software is maximally useful - "the betterest things" - but you can't survive being maximally useful. You have to sacrifice how useful what you make is to not be homeless in 99.99% of cases. You have to make worse, often redundant things, wasting your time and the time of others in the process, because thats the only (feasible and/or reliable) way corporations will pay you to write software.
  - zomglings 7y ago
    Why do we have such an emphasis on making our tools open source? How much does the license matter? Would it be feasible to release source code for inspection while simultaneously retaining exclusive rights to operate the software? Would that garner a negative response from the developer community?
opportune 7y ago
I guess the mental calculus depends on how much you value positively impacting society vs just wanting money

Aeolun 7y ago

Huh? I think I’d try to introduce a new trend of putting this info on your business card or something. Trying to gather the info from companies directly doesn’t scale I think.

yellow_lead 7y ago

I could see many reasons a company wouldn't want their org chart public. Employees too. This seems like it could be a privacy issue.

skybrian 7y ago

This seems like a great example of how privacy risks result in conflicts between buyers and sellers. It doesn't seem very surprising that salespeople want it so badly, and also that organizations don't want them to have it. Some parts of the org chart can be inferred from various public data. Is it any wonder that people want to scrape LinkedIn so much?

zomglings 7y ago

Why such a strong reaction against the idea? For someone who has to sell stuff, this would be incredibly valuable if executed well. It's possible to build something like this using only publicly available data about people and organizations. Genuinely curious - where is the ethical problem?

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> Genuinely curious - where is the ethical problem? Why not sell stuff based on the quality of that stuff? If the stuff is crap, or is a bad fit for the purchaser, but you've managed to sell it anyway thanks to various sales tricks (playing off a company's org chart would be one of such), then you've done an unethical thing. Since buyer's org chart has little to do with quality of your wares and their utility to the buyer, such an org chart spying tool seems to serve only to enable unethical sales behavior.
- zomglings 7y ago
  It's not about trying to pawn off inferior wares onto your customers. I make a living selling software that I write. My customers have no way of judging quickly how good my software is or even whether it solves their problems. When I'm selling to someone, it is my responsibility to figure out whether or not what I'm selling actually solves their problem. Being able to navigate their organization helps me extract this information more quickly than I would otherwise be able to. It allows me to convince people for whom I'm really solving a problem to try out my solution. It allows me to leave people alone for whom my solution would only add noise.

jmanzy01 7y ago

The Org is already doing this (https://theorg.com/ https://theorg.com/)