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FWIW: I think technologists are far too quick to jump to "I bet they want to do it for free marketing" and far too slow to think "I bet they have a large team o

FWIW: I think technologists are far too quick to jump to "I bet they want to do it for free marketing" and far too slow to think "I bet they have a large team of people who does almost literally nothing other than study this exact question, has thought about it for hundreds of thousands more hours than any credit card user has, and has a highly developed technical infrastructure capable of authoritatively answering it." It is a curious, curious belief in the engineering community that we are better at trivial math than banks are. That is not a bet I would encourage people to make.

jonas21 5y ago
Oh, I don't doubt that they have a very sophisticated model for this. I'm just saying they probably take customer acquisition cost into account in the model too. "I bet they do it for free marketing" doesn't mean "I bet they didn't do the math". It means "I bet their marketing department measures everything and is good at math too."
sokoloff 5y ago
I see this pattern almost weekly with engineers (both online and offline). The hubris is fascinating. (Full disclosure: I was often guilty of this myself for the first decade-plus of my career.)
- BirdieNZ 5y ago
  The current discussions around Covid and vaccines made me realise I am continually guilty of this hubris. I've heard people say before "whenever I see a discussion on a subject I am an expert on, HN is full of ignorant commenters", but I feel it far more viscerally now. The first stage was: these anti-vaxxers don't have a degree in immunology, what makes them qualified to even attempt to interpret scientific papers on the subject? The second stage was: wait, I don't have a degree in immunology either, why am I pretending to be "following the science" when I don't have even the vocabulary or the context to properly grasp immunology papers? Accepting that I am a functional ignoramus with regards to Covid, viruses, immunology, vaccine development etc. is very freeing. I'm basically knowledgeable on very few things, and am not an authority on (vaccines|economics|law|history|basically everything). Being good at software engineering doesn't make me an expert at everything I read two articles on.
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    But you have expertise in at least one field, which confers to you an improved ability (relative to someone who is expert at nothing) to recognize expertise vs ignorance. This is, as I understand it, a fairly straightforward conclusion based on the Dunning-Kruger effect.
twic 5y ago
Reminds me of: > The entire fintech sector rules because it’s tech ppl looking at a 500 year old sector that accounts for 10% of the economy and employs some of the smartest and most ruthless people in the world and saying “You know what, I bet these guys are leaving a lot of money on the table” [0] [0] https://twitter.com/quantian1/status/1447705628521152517 https://twitter.com/quantian1/status/1447705628521152517
- ryloric 5y ago
  God, this is so accurate.
Jensson 5y ago
> It is a curious, curious belief in the engineering community that we are better at trivial math than banks are. That is not a bet I would encourage people to make. Although sometimes people are right on that bet, disrupts an entire industry and becomes billionaires. Entire industries can turn a blind eye to problems that are obvious to some, and later it turns out the industry experts were wrong. So I wont stop making simple back of the envelope calculations and discuss and judge industries based on that. In most cases you are wrong when you do it (which you'll realize when you dig down a bit further), but sometimes the industry is wrong and you really don't want to miss those cases.
dataflow 5y ago
You can say that, but then some of us hear about events like [1] [2] [3] that make you wonder how in the world wealthy financial services companies with their almighty teams could not foresee rather blatantly obvious things like (say) the possibility of enthusiasts using their cards to get cash back from tax payments. Or, for example, why do so many banks give several-hundred-dollar "direct deposit" bonuses to people who just do a normal ACH transfer to themselves, despite explicitly claiming that they only allow employment income. Surely that's unintentional rather than being some kind of customer acquisition reverse-psychology tactic? [1] https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-key-will-stop-allowing-american-express-cards-as-funding-option-beginning-january-4/ https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-key-will-stop-allowing... [2] https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-key-no-longer-working-with-plastiq-when-credit-card-linked/ https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-key-no-longer-working-... [3] https://www.doctorofcredit.com/rumor-plastiq-to-stop-allowing-personal-visa-cards-entirely-starting-soon/ https://www.doctorofcredit.com/rumor-plastiq-to-stop-allowin...

jonas21 5y ago

Oh, I don't doubt that they have a very sophisticated model for this. I'm just saying they probably take customer acquisition cost into account in the model too. "I bet they do it for free marketing" doesn't mean "I bet they didn't do the math". It means "I bet their marketing department measures everything and is good at math too."

sokoloff 5y ago

I see this pattern almost weekly with engineers (both online and offline). The hubris is fascinating. (Full disclosure: I was often guilty of this myself for the first decade-plus of my career.)

BirdieNZ 5y ago
The current discussions around Covid and vaccines made me realise I am continually guilty of this hubris. I've heard people say before "whenever I see a discussion on a subject I am an expert on, HN is full of ignorant commenters", but I feel it far more viscerally now. The first stage was: these anti-vaxxers don't have a degree in immunology, what makes them qualified to even attempt to interpret scientific papers on the subject? The second stage was: wait, I don't have a degree in immunology either, why am I pretending to be "following the science" when I don't have even the vocabulary or the context to properly grasp immunology papers? Accepting that I am a functional ignoramus with regards to Covid, viruses, immunology, vaccine development etc. is very freeing. I'm basically knowledgeable on very few things, and am not an authority on (vaccines|economics|law|history|basically everything). Being good at software engineering doesn't make me an expert at everything I read two articles on.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  But you have expertise in at least one field, which confers to you an improved ability (relative to someone who is expert at nothing) to recognize expertise vs ignorance. This is, as I understand it, a fairly straightforward conclusion based on the Dunning-Kruger effect.

twic 5y ago

Reminds me of: > The entire fintech sector rules because it’s tech ppl looking at a 500 year old sector that accounts for 10% of the economy and employs some of the smartest and most ruthless people in the world and saying “You know what, I bet these guys are leaving a lot of money on the table” [0] [0] https://twitter.com/quantian1/status/1447705628521152517 https://twitter.com/quantian1/status/1447705628521152517

ryloric 5y ago
God, this is so accurate.

Jensson 5y ago

> It is a curious, curious belief in the engineering community that we are better at trivial math than banks are. That is not a bet I would encourage people to make. Although sometimes people are right on that bet, disrupts an entire industry and becomes billionaires. Entire industries can turn a blind eye to problems that are obvious to some, and later it turns out the industry experts were wrong. So I wont stop making simple back of the envelope calculations and discuss and judge industries based on that. In most cases you are wrong when you do it (which you'll realize when you dig down a bit further), but sometimes the industry is wrong and you really don't want to miss those cases.

dataflow 5y ago

You can say that, but then some of us hear about events like [1] [2] [3] that make you wonder how in the world wealthy financial services companies with their almighty teams could not foresee rather blatantly obvious things like (say) the possibility of enthusiasts using their cards to get cash back from tax payments. Or, for example, why do so many banks give several-hundred-dollar "direct deposit" bonuses to people who just do a normal ACH transfer to themselves, despite explicitly claiming that they only allow employment income. Surely that's unintentional rather than being some kind of customer acquisition reverse-psychology tactic? [1] https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-key-will-stop-allowing-american-express-cards-as-funding-option-beginning-january-4/ https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-key-will-stop-allowing... [2] https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-key-no-longer-working-with-plastiq-when-credit-card-linked/ https://www.doctorofcredit.com/paypal-key-no-longer-working-... [3] https://www.doctorofcredit.com/rumor-plastiq-to-stop-allowing-personal-visa-cards-entirely-starting-soon/ https://www.doctorofcredit.com/rumor-plastiq-to-stop-allowin...