2 ms·

your goal seems not to understand but to defend, which is why you seem to avoid engaging in the substance of the argument, but rather resorting to an ad hominem

your goal seems not to understand but to defend, which is why you seem to avoid engaging in the substance of the argument, but rather resorting to an ad hominem. no one owes you feel-good esteem or deference for choosing google's hoards of cash over ethics.

joshuamorton 5y ago
When I engaged on the substance of the argument you said "you're too focused on product here, which is not strategy", which isn't a statement that can be engaged with. It's an unusual claim that you didn't justify. I've repeatedly given examples of what I believe to be more coherent strategies, and you've functionally ignored them (and yes replying with "you're not thinking about this with the right mindset" is not engaging) To be clear, even if we assume Youtube's rise was anticompetitive, your argument relies on that being the explicit strategy, which well, there's decent documentation to believe it wasn't. Assuming that because a bad thing happened, everyone involved is evil, is weird, and requires you to jump through weird hoops to justify.
- clairity 5y ago
  let me be blunt: you don't understand what (business) strategy is, nor any of the dimensions of analyzing it. there's no such thing as 'product strategy'; product executes on the business strategy using marketing tactics like building features the target market wants. product features are not a strategy. in a competitive market, there are two broad strategies available: cost (walmart) and differentiation (apple). youtube coerced its market into being favorable to itself by leveraging the anti-competitive aspects i mentioned earlier. that simply trumps product tactics, and even these two competitive market strategies; it subverts entire markets unfairly and uneconomically. i really can't teach you strategy or market economics in an hn comment; you need to go study that yourself. also, arguing from emotion is a sure-fire way to lead yourself astray.
  - lurker616 5y ago
    It's ironic that you are the one who is getting more heated and aggressive in their replies.
  - sizzle 5y ago
    Can you point to some solid resources so I can get on your level? You sound like you know what goes on behind closed doors in the business world. Do you blog about these topics anywhere? Thanks.
    - clairity 5y ago
      get an mba? that’s how i gained much of my knowledge, along with general business experience (product management and founding startups). less flippantly, you can actually find a lot of free mba courses online now. here’s one page listing some resources (halfway down): https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/the-best-free-online-mba-courses-in-2021/ https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/the-best-free-online-mba-cours... uopeople offers a cheap online mba, apparently accredited even (i personally can’t vouch for it’s quality though). investopedia is also a good reference resource for looking up random business concepts.
      - sizzle 5y ago
        I wonder how much of your knowledge is from the MBA vs experience grinding in real business world experience. I know a handful of people who said MBA was worthless, only did it for connections and pay bump in their product orgs at F500 tech companies. Anyway, thanks for sharing a data point towards MBA, I'll look into it. Have you read anything by Karl Marx regarding captialism? You seem to know a ton about capital and how it pervades society and social stratification of the workforce and labor.
        clairity 5y ago
        plenty of folks coast through mba programs learning only superficially, but that shouldn't taint the value of the information itself. i gained plenty of confidence in the areas of finance, marketing, accounting, operations, etc. that i didn't have before and which was directly applicable to being a product manager and startup founder. i've read a bit of marx but mostly in digest form. das kapital and adam smith's wealth of nations are on my list of older, original works that i want to read in full. i'm sympathetic to the labor theory of value, which both explored in their works, but most modern economists seem to eschew and even fear.

joshuamorton 5y ago

When I engaged on the substance of the argument you said "you're too focused on product here, which is not strategy", which isn't a statement that can be engaged with. It's an unusual claim that you didn't justify. I've repeatedly given examples of what I believe to be more coherent strategies, and you've functionally ignored them (and yes replying with "you're not thinking about this with the right mindset" is not engaging) To be clear, even if we assume Youtube's rise was anticompetitive, your argument relies on that being the explicit strategy, which well, there's decent documentation to believe it wasn't. Assuming that because a bad thing happened, everyone involved is evil, is weird, and requires you to jump through weird hoops to justify.

clairity 5y ago
let me be blunt: you don't understand what (business) strategy is, nor any of the dimensions of analyzing it. there's no such thing as 'product strategy'; product executes on the business strategy using marketing tactics like building features the target market wants. product features are not a strategy. in a competitive market, there are two broad strategies available: cost (walmart) and differentiation (apple). youtube coerced its market into being favorable to itself by leveraging the anti-competitive aspects i mentioned earlier. that simply trumps product tactics, and even these two competitive market strategies; it subverts entire markets unfairly and uneconomically. i really can't teach you strategy or market economics in an hn comment; you need to go study that yourself. also, arguing from emotion is a sure-fire way to lead yourself astray.
- lurker616 5y ago
  It's ironic that you are the one who is getting more heated and aggressive in their replies.
- sizzle 5y ago
  Can you point to some solid resources so I can get on your level? You sound like you know what goes on behind closed doors in the business world. Do you blog about these topics anywhere? Thanks.
  - clairity 5y ago
    get an mba? that’s how i gained much of my knowledge, along with general business experience (product management and founding startups). less flippantly, you can actually find a lot of free mba courses online now. here’s one page listing some resources (halfway down): https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/the-best-free-online-mba-courses-in-2021/ https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/the-best-free-online-mba-cours... uopeople offers a cheap online mba, apparently accredited even (i personally can’t vouch for it’s quality though). investopedia is also a good reference resource for looking up random business concepts.
    - sizzle 5y ago
      I wonder how much of your knowledge is from the MBA vs experience grinding in real business world experience. I know a handful of people who said MBA was worthless, only did it for connections and pay bump in their product orgs at F500 tech companies. Anyway, thanks for sharing a data point towards MBA, I'll look into it. Have you read anything by Karl Marx regarding captialism? You seem to know a ton about capital and how it pervades society and social stratification of the workforce and labor.
      - clairity 5y ago
        plenty of folks coast through mba programs learning only superficially, but that shouldn't taint the value of the information itself. i gained plenty of confidence in the areas of finance, marketing, accounting, operations, etc. that i didn't have before and which was directly applicable to being a product manager and startup founder. i've read a bit of marx but mostly in digest form. das kapital and adam smith's wealth of nations are on my list of older, original works that i want to read in full. i'm sympathetic to the labor theory of value, which both explored in their works, but most modern economists seem to eschew and even fear.