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I know some people doing data entry jobs at groupon. 1- they hate their jobs. 2- many are hired as temp, and given absolutely crappy wages 3- they are being h

I know some people doing data entry jobs at groupon. 1- they hate their jobs. 2- many are hired as temp, and given absolutely crappy wages 3- they are being hired to do something that could easily be accomplished with some programming (i.e., taking data from one system and copy/pasting it verbatim into another system)

jkuria 14y ago
Andrew mason was quoted as saying: "We view self-service with the same skepticism that a company in California might view hiring a salesperson. And it's ended up working well for us." So perhaps they also view automation (software replacing humans doing repetitive tasks) with the same skepticism?
- jkuria 14y ago
  Original article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303745304576365160251109224.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230374530457636...
- larrys 14y ago
  That's actually fascinating. And it makes sense from my perspective of a) having been involved years ago in selling coupons to small businesses and b) dealing with small businesses for other things. You need to give them a turnkey experience, hold their hand and make it easy for them. You show up with the "form" prefilled (I mean like a paper form) and say "sign here and I'll do the rest." And if you drop the paperwork off (say they are out to lunch) you put those little post-it arrows so they have nothing to think about. This is really big with that market. I'm not a fan of groupon but it impresses me that they are operating this way (and that Mason said that).
pbreit 14y ago
Only programmers advise throwing code at something that is easily performed by humans. In this case, the humans are 1) more readily available than engineers, 2) cheaper and 3) more flexible.
- SonicSoul 14y ago
  4) less accurate, 5) less consistent, 6) less predictable but my view is skewed as i'm a programmer.

jkuria 14y ago

Andrew mason was quoted as saying: "We view self-service with the same skepticism that a company in California might view hiring a salesperson. And it's ended up working well for us." So perhaps they also view automation (software replacing humans doing repetitive tasks) with the same skepticism?

jkuria 14y ago
Original article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303745304576365160251109224.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230374530457636...
larrys 14y ago
That's actually fascinating. And it makes sense from my perspective of a) having been involved years ago in selling coupons to small businesses and b) dealing with small businesses for other things. You need to give them a turnkey experience, hold their hand and make it easy for them. You show up with the "form" prefilled (I mean like a paper form) and say "sign here and I'll do the rest." And if you drop the paperwork off (say they are out to lunch) you put those little post-it arrows so they have nothing to think about. This is really big with that market. I'm not a fan of groupon but it impresses me that they are operating this way (and that Mason said that).

pbreit 14y ago

Only programmers advise throwing code at something that is easily performed by humans. In this case, the humans are 1) more readily available than engineers, 2) cheaper and 3) more flexible.

SonicSoul 14y ago
4) less accurate, 5) less consistent, 6) less predictable but my view is skewed as i'm a programmer.