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There is something of a campaign going on now and it is not 'cool' to compliment some billionaires. Apart from this, there are valid real reasons to dislike to

There is something of a campaign going on now and it is not 'cool' to compliment some billionaires. Apart from this, there are valid real reasons to dislike to former Amazon's CEO. That said, reading his early interviews it hard not be impressed by the foresight and insight. I personally do think he got some things wrong ("if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" mantra being one of them ) or at least got others to misunderstand it, but it is hard to deny the results he helped manifest. It is the same impression I have of Thiel.

nordsieck 4y ago
> I personally do think he got some things wrong ("if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" mantra being one of them ) Could you explain this point more. I'm genuinely curious.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Sure. Some context may be needed. I suppose my views are formed in this way partially, because I became an MBA after having soul crushing jobs, which does tend to change your perspective a little bit ( and give you an insight into what is going on in a head of the front line drone that is forced to implement orders the best way he/she can ). << "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" 1. It is wrong in a literal sense. You obviously can. Maybe you should not ( which is a valid question to ask ), but you absolutely can manage things and not measure everything. 2. It is wrong when taken metaphorically to a logical conclusion. The mantra seems to encourage ( and did encourage based on some of the things managers tried to measure -- lines of code come to mind ) measuring everything. In accounting, there is a concept similar law's 'de minimis' ( I kinda don't want to use that name, because I worry people wills start questioning that from tax perspective, which is its own animal I don't want to touch, but in practical terms, the name matches the concept exactly - basically 'too small to matter'), where accounting for some items in some processes is borderline pointless ( say a screw ). Every so often, people in accounting classes go 'but what if', 'but we can track it'. And the answer is invariably: 'You can, but is it worth it?' Naturally, you could counter it with: 'Well, you don't know if you don't measure it.', but there has to be a point at which the tracking of atoms get too crazy. So that is my basic thought on the matter. I can expand a little more, but I think that covers it. Note, I am not saying it is not worth it to measure stuff. I am saying it is important to be discriminating over what you pick to measure, because, people being people, will optimize for it.
- triceratops 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- extragood 4y ago
  From my perspective: there are some things you fundamentally can't measure. One of the teams I manage is technical support (B2B SaaS). Support's core functionality in an organization is to prevent churn. If a customer reaches out to support, they have some issue that is blocking them from using your product effectively. If you are unable to unblock them, then you risk them switching to a competitor. The problem is that not every support ticket/interaction will result in churn so we can't really directly measure how effective we are at our core function. So instead we measure the number of tickets raised, customer satisfaction, adherence to SLAs, etc, which is as good of an approximation as we can get with the resources we have available to us. In my case, those numbers all look reasonably good, so I'm treated as an effective manager, even though we don't (and maybe can't) really know how much churn we've prevented. I wish we could though - it would make my arguments to executives on behalf of the support team that much easier to say, hey we retained $XXXXXX in revenue over this period.
startupsfail 4y ago
If you purchase a toy at Amazon and it is contaminated with lead or cadmium paint, you would not notice. And even if you would, there is no one legally responsible. That outfit in China that sold it doesn’t care. And Amazon is just a marketplace and is not responsible. Toy stores (Toys”R”Us) used to be a thing. They were legally on the hook, if they’d sell contaminated toys. Now no one is. And unfiltered toys from China are shipped directly.
- hippich 4y ago
  Recently I relisted a simple 3d printed attachment for Nerf gun on Amazon. It got assigned to toys category. Listing never went live because they wanted all kinds of documentation about kids safety. Obviously it was not worth it for me and I dropped the idea. I did sell it in the past without all these issues. So things do change in terms of safety, and likely because there is at least some liability on Amazon
  - startupsfail 4y ago
    Are you in China? It is likely prohibitively difficult to obtain the required documentation in the US, because very few manufacturers make toys here. For comrades in China, the link to documentation forms, pre-filled is likely available to anyone who needs it. There is probably a tutorial/package how to sell toys on Amazon.
cercatrova 4y ago
> There is something of a campaign going on now and it is not 'cool' to compliment some billionaires. I've seen this when HN shifted from YC applicants, ie startup founders, to tech workers in general. There is quite a paucity of startup news that's not necessarily related to the wider tech ecosystem.

nordsieck 4y ago

> I personally do think he got some things wrong ("if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" mantra being one of them ) Could you explain this point more. I'm genuinely curious.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Sure. Some context may be needed. I suppose my views are formed in this way partially, because I became an MBA after having soul crushing jobs, which does tend to change your perspective a little bit ( and give you an insight into what is going on in a head of the front line drone that is forced to implement orders the best way he/she can ). << "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" 1. It is wrong in a literal sense. You obviously can. Maybe you should not ( which is a valid question to ask ), but you absolutely can manage things and not measure everything. 2. It is wrong when taken metaphorically to a logical conclusion. The mantra seems to encourage ( and did encourage based on some of the things managers tried to measure -- lines of code come to mind ) measuring everything. In accounting, there is a concept similar law's 'de minimis' ( I kinda don't want to use that name, because I worry people wills start questioning that from tax perspective, which is its own animal I don't want to touch, but in practical terms, the name matches the concept exactly - basically 'too small to matter'), where accounting for some items in some processes is borderline pointless ( say a screw ). Every so often, people in accounting classes go 'but what if', 'but we can track it'. And the answer is invariably: 'You can, but is it worth it?' Naturally, you could counter it with: 'Well, you don't know if you don't measure it.', but there has to be a point at which the tracking of atoms get too crazy. So that is my basic thought on the matter. I can expand a little more, but I think that covers it. Note, I am not saying it is not worth it to measure stuff. I am saying it is important to be discriminating over what you pick to measure, because, people being people, will optimize for it.
triceratops 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
extragood 4y ago
From my perspective: there are some things you fundamentally can't measure. One of the teams I manage is technical support (B2B SaaS). Support's core functionality in an organization is to prevent churn. If a customer reaches out to support, they have some issue that is blocking them from using your product effectively. If you are unable to unblock them, then you risk them switching to a competitor. The problem is that not every support ticket/interaction will result in churn so we can't really directly measure how effective we are at our core function. So instead we measure the number of tickets raised, customer satisfaction, adherence to SLAs, etc, which is as good of an approximation as we can get with the resources we have available to us. In my case, those numbers all look reasonably good, so I'm treated as an effective manager, even though we don't (and maybe can't) really know how much churn we've prevented. I wish we could though - it would make my arguments to executives on behalf of the support team that much easier to say, hey we retained $XXXXXX in revenue over this period.

startupsfail 4y ago

If you purchase a toy at Amazon and it is contaminated with lead or cadmium paint, you would not notice. And even if you would, there is no one legally responsible. That outfit in China that sold it doesn’t care. And Amazon is just a marketplace and is not responsible. Toy stores (Toys”R”Us) used to be a thing. They were legally on the hook, if they’d sell contaminated toys. Now no one is. And unfiltered toys from China are shipped directly.

hippich 4y ago
Recently I relisted a simple 3d printed attachment for Nerf gun on Amazon. It got assigned to toys category. Listing never went live because they wanted all kinds of documentation about kids safety. Obviously it was not worth it for me and I dropped the idea. I did sell it in the past without all these issues. So things do change in terms of safety, and likely because there is at least some liability on Amazon
- startupsfail 4y ago
  Are you in China? It is likely prohibitively difficult to obtain the required documentation in the US, because very few manufacturers make toys here. For comrades in China, the link to documentation forms, pre-filled is likely available to anyone who needs it. There is probably a tutorial/package how to sell toys on Amazon.

cercatrova 4y ago

> There is something of a campaign going on now and it is not 'cool' to compliment some billionaires. I've seen this when HN shifted from YC applicants, ie startup founders, to tech workers in general. There is quite a paucity of startup news that's not necessarily related to the wider tech ecosystem.