3 ms·

Honestly, to add on to what you said, it's amazing about the lack of domain knowledge that developers and product owners have in making systems for people. For

by monksy 3y ago

Honestly, to add on to what you said, it's amazing about the lack of domain knowledge that developers and product owners have in making systems for people. For the clerks and workers using the POS, it's often more of a hinderence than it is a help. When you look at less technically reliant societies (i.e. market places in Asia) you'll see this more often. Prices are negotiated, they can be their own warehouse, smaller companies work together (your package getting from maker, middleman, aliexpress to your door is incredibly complex but they can make it happen within 2-3 weeks).

esel2k 3y ago
Isn’t the reason rather that management will say: Is this absolutely necessary and will it increase sales? And often the answer is no unless you can demonstrate the time gain and emotion of your customer. When the margins are super thight anything that won’t help margings is left away and home delivery /online shopping will be prioritised for the tech team/budget.
- TylerE 3y ago
  The thing a smart manager will ask is "does this open up new avenues for theft/scams". I suspect that it does, unless there is a shit ton of auditing in place.
  - monksy 3y ago
    At scale yes. In realistic common edge case scenarios that don't involve demotivated and exploitive businesses, no.
- monksy 3y ago
  Of course they'll say no. It presents a version of the technology that is not commonly done. Justification for their stubborn resistance to support the customer and the users is not relivant here. We're still stuck filling out forms and passing validation to complete transactions. My complaint here is that arrogance that POs and devs have in how humans operate with the software is way off. What happens if you want to buy out Aldi's entire stock of brie? Is it reasonable that you should be paying stockprice*quantity? (The answer outside of technology enforced rules is no.. Additionally to aldi corp, theres no reason not to offer a discount here) [Also, in practice they try to hack their way arround it by overriding the price]
smelendez 3y ago
It's always much faster to check out with a couple of things in a New York bodega/deli, even while making small talk with the clerk, than to check out with the same items at the chain drugstore down the street.
selalipop 3y ago
I always like to say something meaningful before plugging my project, but that's exactly why I started working on https://notionsmith.ai https://notionsmith.ai Overall I'm really excited about LLMs being integrated deeper into product development, there are a lot of insights already captured in their output that people building products could use
- jaktet 3y ago
  This is awesome have you posted it to HN yet?
  - jaktet 3y ago
    I see that you have a month ago. Anyways I think it’s great, wondering what it costs you to run it for free
    - selalipop 3y ago
      Glad someone liked it! :) It's currently ~$100 a month, I'm working on a paid version but a lot of my users ended up being people BRIC countries so I don't mind footing the bill if they find it useful
retrocryptid 3y ago
To be fair, though, the "customers" aren't the customers. In modern software companies, you don't sell products to be profitable, you sell them to be plausible. As a software company, your value to a venture investor is much greater than it could possibly be to a potential customer. The objective of the startup is to look plausible until the current round of investors sells their stake to the next round of investors. Part of they way those investors value the company is whether or not they think they can sell the company to a greater set of fools. In the modern software company there is only one customer, the next early stage investor. I can assure you, your execs know how to pitch to them, otherwise they wouldn't have received their A round.
LeonB 3y ago
I maintained a POS for a large retail chain - and the variety of transactions that it could handle was far narrower and less subtle than the type of trades that I witnessed working at a weekend open air market. At the market there was all sorts of bartering and swapping and deal making - my “business analyst” brain recognised that to model all the “transactions” occurring at a typical market would be super complex. However… the large retail chain should not support subtle/overlapping transactions of that sort- not because it’s too complex to model, even if it was free to model it, make the software track it — the reason the retail chain would avoid it is: profit margin. You do profitable things, you do them a lot, and you don’t pay the opportunity cost of doing less profitable things. That’s the open secret of successful retail. And small businesses everywhere do not internalise this.

by monksy 3y ago

esel2k 3y ago

Isn’t the reason rather that management will say: Is this absolutely necessary and will it increase sales? And often the answer is no unless you can demonstrate the time gain and emotion of your customer. When the margins are super thight anything that won’t help margings is left away and home delivery /online shopping will be prioritised for the tech team/budget.

TylerE 3y ago
The thing a smart manager will ask is "does this open up new avenues for theft/scams". I suspect that it does, unless there is a shit ton of auditing in place.
- monksy 3y ago
  At scale yes. In realistic common edge case scenarios that don't involve demotivated and exploitive businesses, no.
monksy 3y ago
Of course they'll say no. It presents a version of the technology that is not commonly done. Justification for their stubborn resistance to support the customer and the users is not relivant here. We're still stuck filling out forms and passing validation to complete transactions. My complaint here is that arrogance that POs and devs have in how humans operate with the software is way off. What happens if you want to buy out Aldi's entire stock of brie? Is it reasonable that you should be paying stockprice*quantity? (The answer outside of technology enforced rules is no.. Additionally to aldi corp, theres no reason not to offer a discount here) [Also, in practice they try to hack their way arround it by overriding the price]

smelendez 3y ago

It's always much faster to check out with a couple of things in a New York bodega/deli, even while making small talk with the clerk, than to check out with the same items at the chain drugstore down the street.

selalipop 3y ago

I always like to say something meaningful before plugging my project, but that's exactly why I started working on https://notionsmith.ai https://notionsmith.ai Overall I'm really excited about LLMs being integrated deeper into product development, there are a lot of insights already captured in their output that people building products could use

jaktet 3y ago
This is awesome have you posted it to HN yet?
- jaktet 3y ago
  I see that you have a month ago. Anyways I think it’s great, wondering what it costs you to run it for free
  - selalipop 3y ago
    Glad someone liked it! :) It's currently ~$100 a month, I'm working on a paid version but a lot of my users ended up being people BRIC countries so I don't mind footing the bill if they find it useful

retrocryptid 3y ago

To be fair, though, the "customers" aren't the customers. In modern software companies, you don't sell products to be profitable, you sell them to be plausible. As a software company, your value to a venture investor is much greater than it could possibly be to a potential customer. The objective of the startup is to look plausible until the current round of investors sells their stake to the next round of investors. Part of they way those investors value the company is whether or not they think they can sell the company to a greater set of fools. In the modern software company there is only one customer, the next early stage investor. I can assure you, your execs know how to pitch to them, otherwise they wouldn't have received their A round.

LeonB 3y ago

I maintained a POS for a large retail chain - and the variety of transactions that it could handle was far narrower and less subtle than the type of trades that I witnessed working at a weekend open air market. At the market there was all sorts of bartering and swapping and deal making - my “business analyst” brain recognised that to model all the “transactions” occurring at a typical market would be super complex. However… the large retail chain should not support subtle/overlapping transactions of that sort- not because it’s too complex to model, even if it was free to model it, make the software track it — the reason the retail chain would avoid it is: profit margin. You do profitable things, you do them a lot, and you don’t pay the opportunity cost of doing less profitable things. That’s the open secret of successful retail. And small businesses everywhere do not internalise this.