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You use it consistently during the workday and it's still not worth $20/mo?
by ezekg 4y ago
You use it consistently during the workday and it's still not worth $20/mo?
- apples_oranges 4y agoThis is hacker news, a title that includes breaking the rules. Should almost be a matter of pride to get it for less than $20..
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- behnamoh 4y ago> Should almost be a matter of pride to get it for less than $20. When you're a high schooler, yes, even Steve Jobs did it. But when your monthly salary is easily in the thousands, it's not a matter of pride to get it for <$20, it's a matter of stupidity.
- anhner 4y agoI agree, it's stupid to pay $20 for something you can get for 2 cents
- SpeedilyDamage 4y ago$20/mo, for the people in this situation, is not an amount of money worth thinking about.
- selcuka 4y ago> I agree, it's stupid to pay $20 for something you can get for 2 cents > $20/mo, for the people in this situation, is not an amount of money worth thinking about. I don't follow this logic. In this case everything that is currently sold for 2 cents can also be sold for $20, because "it is not an amount of money worth thinking about" (at least for some people).
- SpeedilyDamage 4y agoFor some people.
- emsixteen 4y agoYour perception of money really isn't consistent with the vast majority, I'd imagine. Frivolously throwing money at unnecessary subscriptions isn't something for me.
- SpeedilyDamage 4y agoYou get to call this frivolous, but my perception of money isn't consistent? Interesting.
- emsixteen 4y ago> consistent with the vast majority As ever the whole sentence is important, rather than just picking out a part of it.
- SpeedilyDamage 4y agoWhat part did I miss?
- emsixteen 4y ago> with the vast majority
- wongarsu 4y agoFor most use cases, normal GPT-3 provides just as good results as Chat-GPT (though Chat-GPT is a better interface). So I guess if you don't use it much, or you can use one of the less powerful versions, the pay-as-you-go model of GPT-3 is much cheaper. On the other hand, it's certainly possible to spend more than $20/month on GPT-3.
- IanCal 4y agoGPT3 also doesn't have the same restrictions. It might be preferable if you're tired of getting "I can't do X I'm a large language model" even if it wasn't cheaper.
- breck 4y agoShhh, I'm his boss and have convinced him he's making a good salary at 25 cents per hour.
- extr 4y agoNo. I'm a salaried employee. Marginal time/effort savings do not directly translate into more money for me. But the $20 charge hits my bank account today. Perhaps if I use it consistently enough and in smart enough ways I will be perceived to be a more valuable/productive employee, which might translate to a raise. But that's a lot of maybes. I'm sure it will get to that point eventually, but by then the value will be undeniable and my employer will pay for the subscription. Until then, I will continue to use the free version, or pay-per-use with the API, or just use google.
- cutenewt 4y agoCan you ask your boss to expense it?
- extr 4y agoMaybe! They already expense Copilot, so I don't think it would be too out of bounds. I haven't asked yet, considering this just came out today. I'm guessing they will allow it, the marginal ROI calculation actually makes sense from an employer perspective.
- 300bps 4y agoNo. I'm a salaried employee. Marginal time/effort savings do not directly translate into more money for me. I am also a salaried employee and if I can save a minute of work time that’s one less minute I have to work. I have a body of work I need to complete and sometimes that takes me 40 hours and sometimes much more. The only way I can think of that $20 per month for increased productivity doesn’t help is if your company’s metric of success is being present/working 8 hours per day.
- RussianCow 4y ago> The only way I can think of that $20 per month for increased productivity doesn’t help is if your company’s metric of success is being present/working 8 hours per day. You've just described most office jobs.
- mkraft 4y agoRight? $1/workday and you still get to use it evenings and weekends. No wonder b2b is the way.
- bunnyswipecom 4y agoI mean, I can pay 0$ and still use it. It's free.
- m463 4y agoThis is one of those puzzling things to me. You own your life - why not spend your own money for the things that make you and your life better? Who cares? I worked at a job where I had a small, crappy monitor. I made decent cash. I just bought a large decent monitor and brought it into work. I ended up using it for many years. My life was significantly better. I've done that at several jobs since then, and NEVER regretted it, in fact it was one of the soundest decisions I've ever made. Also keyboard and mouse. There are so many people using the default keyboard, the default monitor, the default tools. If you push work to do it for you, you need to challenge the "everone gets a dell 19" monitor" b.s. If you push your boss, he might have to do justification paperwork. Just become what you are.
- ihatepython 4y agoAlso that $20 should be tax deductable
- smoldesu 4y ago> why not spend your own money for the things that make you and your life better? Objectively, a few reasons: - You can't afford it. - Paying for it doesn't let you "own" anything - It's not reliable - It's legal compatibility is not fully decided yet - It can preclude opportunities for learning and even teach you entirely false things under the guise they are true The list probably goes on, but I don't think we should buy everything that stands to make our lives better. If we applied that logic to everything in our lives, we'd all use computers from Skymall and eat food we see on QVC.
- behnamoh 4y ago> - It can preclude opportunities for learning and even teach you entirely false things under the guise they are true An example? The OP was talking about purchasing a monitor/keyboard/mouse.
- heleninboodler 4y ago> If we applied that logic to everything in our lives, we'd all use computers from Skymall and eat food we see on QVC Pretty sure GP didn't say "completely give in to all impulse purchases and cease to use your brain about the worth of things." I agree with GP. I bought my own monitor. It's great. It significantly improves my workday, and I get to take it with me if I quit. It generally gets two reactions: first, "how did you manage to get a better monitor than everyone else" and second, "why would you spend your money to help the company?" Not sure how something that contributes directly to my comfort while performing my job is helping the company more than it's helping me, but whatever. Seems very much like cutting off your nose to spite your face to just stick with the standard monitor to avoid "giving" the company something. Same as the folks who spend time every month filing expense reports and having corporate mobile device management profiles on their phones so they can get reimbursed $20/month for their mobile data.
- sangnoir 4y agoIs it surprisingly? Value is not determined by frequency of use, but by the qualitative difference: if gp doesn't use it at all, would anything of value be lost? He's a thought experiment: imagine a device that changes the scent of the air I breathe to something I find pleasant. I could use this device all day everyday for free (or on the cheap), but I will not pay $20/mo for it. Losing access to the features really isn't worth that much. On the flip side, many people pay thousands of dollars to rent machines that helps them breathe, even if that adds up to total of less than an hour of their lives - which is nor much.
- lanza 4y agoPeople are so cheap it's ridiculous. If we ever get past people being unwilling to pay for software beyond rates of 1 cent per hour tech will blow up to 10x as big as it is right now.
- anhner 4y agoPeople are also delusional
- nirvdrum 4y agoAlternatively, people are tired of paying subscriptions for everything. And many SaaS actively mislead on price and employ dark patterns to make canceling difficult. It's often not worth the hassle.
- account42 4y agoThink of all the different software and tools you use daily and consider how much you would pay if they were all $20/month subscriptions. Using something daily also says nothing about the value it provides - maybe there is only marginal utility over the next best option but being free makes it worth it. SAAS vendors are so greedy it's ridiculous.
- IanCal 4y agoThey seem to be getting good results using the paid API that has fewer restrictions, and have a neat integration with their workflow.
- anhner 4y agoI use my toothbrush every day but I wouldn't pay $20 per month for it. I use my keyboard everyday but I wouldn't pay $20 per month for it. In fact, I paid around $4 total for it, as paying more would bring significantly more diminishing returns. I use my phone every day and have used it for the past 5 years with no issue, it has brought me so much value and yet, if I draw the line, it didn't even reach $20 per month (price divided by time used), not even mentioning that I expect it to last another 2-3 years, bringing the cost down even further. What kind of crazy value would you expect something to have in order to be worth $20/mo?
- somsak2 4y agothe cost of your phone plus the call/text/data plan is less than $20/month?
- anhner 4y agoNo, just the phone. I use the call/text/data plant so little since I'm mostly on wifi anyway, so I left that out.
- Etheryte 4y agoYes, why would it be any higher? My phone plan is around a tenner a month and over the lifetime of my phone, the cost per month is definitely less than that.
- Markstar 4y agoYep, easy. I pay 8€/month for 3GB, which is plenty since I'm connected to Wifi most of the time. And I paid 220 for my phone, which easily lasts 2 years. That said: As a self-employed programmer, I think 20$/month for increased productivity is a steal!
- 30minAdayHN 4y agoI even thought $20/month is such a cheap option. You articulated very well that $20 is indeed a lot despite something being useful everyday. It's time to revisit all my monthly $10 subscriptions and see how much they are actually delivering reasonable value.
- OOPMan 4y agoI pay $80 a year for IntelliJ and that works out to waaay less than something like CoPilot or ChatGPT and is waaay more consistently useful. $20 a month for ML tool that is only sometimes useful is a tough sell, especially in a world where a lot of people feel like $80 a year for IntelliJ is too much. Coders are thrifty bastards, except when it comes to their personal vices in which case financial responsibility goes out the window...
- aantix 4y agoCopilot is worth it. Even with a Jetbrains license.
- jmacd 4y agoThe absurdity of OPs comment cannot be understated.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoOne dollar per day? If it saves you less than 5 minutes...it's paid for.
- FounderBurr 4y agoHe deserves to be paid for his work, other people not as much.
- chaxor 4y agoI would think the big issue here is that they still make a ton of money off of you by selling your data. Any Software as Service is deeply flawed because it is pretty much guaranteed to extract as much data from the consumer as possible. In this case, it is quite a bit worse, because it's likely close to your entire content or body of work that they will take. So unless it becomes something that runs locally and has no networking component to it whatsoever, it's not going to be worth spending money on for many people or companies.
- s3p 4y agoConsidering the cost of the API, no. It's not.