10 ms·

Solve the Problems Your Parents Have

220 points by dmor 14y ago

hayksaakian 14y ago
I don't usually agree with the OP, but she's spot on with this one IMO.
- anw 14y ago
  Yes, I've run into a few of these points often enough to see that we really need to find a better way to bring ease of use and intuitive designs for technology aimed at people who did not grow up with it. Having moved from the east coast to the west, I often will try to find a way to get my mom to Skype/Google+ so we can see and talk to each other. However, it usually winds up turning into a phone call and me emailing pictures to her. I love all that technology has to offer, but at the same time I hate the perceived limitation that we've made leaps and bounds when things like the above still are an issue. *note: I'm speaking only about the benefit of consumer tech to parents/baby boomers, and not about things such as advancements in the medical field, automobiles, etc.
  - jonpeda 14y ago
    This is the problem with the ad-supported walled-garden closed-system model. My grandma can't see my stuff on G+, due to its awful usability, but if they opened up a nice API, someone could build a client app suited to audiences like the 80+ set.
    - hayksaakian 14y ago
      iirc, they recently opened up a read only api.
jere 14y ago
>Your Parents Have Money Actually, the biggest problem among my parents is that they don't. My dad makes less than half what I do and he's incredibly knowledgeable, skilled, and hard working (a lot more than I am). If there's one thing I could do for him it'd be finding him a better paying job. But I don't know if there's any app that can fix being in a dying, underpaid industry. Sometimes I daydream about writing him a portfolio site or something, but I have no idea if that would help.
- revorad 14y ago
  Do you mind sharing what skills your dad has? Maybe you could help him teach those skills to other people who would be willing to pay for them? Platforms like Udemy, Skillshare and training courses like patio11's deliver a lot of value for some people. Even if your dad's skills are in a specific dying industry, he probably has some transferable skills which others want to learn.
  - jere 14y ago
    For lack of a better term, he's a woodworker. He spent decades building really snazzy museum exhibits and booths for trade shows. He's usually identified as the most skilled person in whichever shop he goes to, but there doesn't seem to be a very high ceiling (again, I make below the US average for developers and he makes less than half that) Here's an example: http://www.designdimension.com/projects/cranium-connection-head-structure http://www.designdimension.com/projects/cranium-connection-h... Is that something somebody would pay to learn? I don't know. Maybe.
    - revorad 14y ago
      Wow, that's beautiful work. I would be very very surprised if there's no one who would pay good money to learn that.
    - WalterBright 14y ago
      Wouldn't such skill be transferrable to working with sheet metal? I bet the business of restoring and creating custom hot rods should pay well.
    - revorad 14y ago
      Just had another thought: 3D printing is a hot growing field of work. Can your dad not learn to apply his skills there?
      - jere 14y ago
        Wow, somehow I never thought of that. Maybe I need to save up for a makerbot.
larsberg 14y ago
The retirement problem is particularly interesting. There are folks like my father who has spent > 40 years in the foundry industry about to retire, for whom there will probably be serious demand for part-time consulting (to answer questions for the 3 or so 20-somethings straight out of IIT they hire to replace him). There's probably a business there in the connecting people (possibly over Skype, etc.) and handling all the billing and tax-related issues for mostly-retired people who are collecting social security and are computer-friendly but not heavily computer-savvy. I'm sure my dad would use it... from a nice part of the country where there are a ton of golf courses.
tokenadult 14y ago
Ah! Finally a submission about what hackers can do to find business opportunities for which my age and lack of experience hacking is no barrier to me having something to say. As mentioned in the second reply comment here, the "your parents have money" comment is mistaken relative to many of the hackers reading this site. A lot of young hackers, it appears to me, are leveraging their parents' investment in their own education to move into occupations with high economic returns, after the parents didn't have the same opportunity in their generation. On the other hand, "someday you will be like your parents" is a probable future that most people forget too readily, so the point is well taken that if you want to build a better world for yourself in the future, you might get a reality check on your plans by building a better world for your parents today. I can't speak to the issue of what single parents need. I know I would dread having to use any current kind of dating site if (God forbid) my wife predeceased me. Health information is always popular here on Hacker News, even among the young participants, so it stands to reason that anything that can help people a generation older than you are keep good health must have wide appeal. Even in an era of steadily increasing life expectancy at all ages, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-why-we-die-global-life-expectancy http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2810516/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2810516/ people still like to be healthier rather than sicker, and to live longer rather than die sooner.
- jonpeda 14y ago
  > I know I would dread having to use any current kind of dating site if (God forbid) my wife predeceased me. Huh, I know some wonderful success stories for this use case.
- bloaf 14y ago
  When you say health, all I can think of is a fitbit for older folks. I wonder if a small device like that could collect enough different kinds of data to be useful to doctors.
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    Given that someone was looking at getting medically relevant data out of patterns in the amount of time it takes people to answer the phone, I expect there would be plenty of useful information there. The problem is making the relevant information accessible and understandable.
RyanZAG 14y ago
Just a warning: you are going to have a very difficult time marketing to retirees if that is your target market. Hacker News or blog spam through techy circles on Facebook is simply not going to cut it - you're going to need massive funding and do television, newspaper and physical signposts in order to hit any kind of critical mass for that audience. Good luck, and may huge amounts of venture capital be with you!
- bloaf 14y ago
  Maybe you could convince kids (read: 20-somethings) that your invention is the perfect gift to buy for their parents.
  - mtrimpe 14y ago
    Or you can get word of mouth working on a per-retirement-home basis...
- hayksaakian 14y ago
  Or go even more meta, and design a modern way of marketing to older people.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- egb 14y ago
  Indeed. I make iPhone/iPad games that are somewhat aimed at seniors, and there is essentially zero point in my following the usual paths of hoping for reviews from gaming or iOS blogs that seniors don't even know exist. Word of mouth is my savior :-)
radley 14y ago
Over 50? I'm 44 & doing my own start-up and expect to have a good time working hard for the next 20 years. It's fun and gives me something to focus on. Meanwhile, my mom had a stroke 6 months ago and lost some communication skills, so she needs to keep writing / talking to people to recover. She's semi-tech savvy, but not professionally, so we brought her on to develop our user manuals. Aside from start-up user development skills, by the time she's done here she'll also be adept at Wordpress & UserVoice.
10dpd 14y ago
Please re-read 'Crossing the Chasm'. If you want to create a truly innovative business, its better to target early adopters/innovators than people traditionally known to be conservative with new products. If you want to rehash existing ideas (e.g. an affiliate network thats easy to use) then this idea/model works fine.
- dmor 14y ago
  You should come back and check out all the progress we've made on going way beyond an affiliate network. I'm writing this post to think, and solving my parents problems is certainly top of mind for me. I called my Mom about 30 minutes ago and she told me she had just been searching on the Internet for movies to go see, since it is raining in Seattle today and she can't ride the horses. Helping people figure out how to live well and spend their time and money in a way that leaves them satisfied is a universal problem, and certainly one my parents have.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  I've mentioned this before, but my idea of a sexy business is one that makes money and helps people. By this metric it's not actually a requirement that I do anything new.[0] [0]: Or even that it's anything different from a traditional small business.
neltnerb 14y ago
My mom was one of those part-time people for 22 years (younger brother), and I'm very proud of her. She got out of college with some basic understanding of computers, but didn't really get much opportunity to become a technie at work. Now, at 53, she is teaching herself Python so that she has a better understanding of the kinds of issues tech people she is interfacing with from the management side encounter so that she can better understand what they're saying and also better prevent poor decisions from higher up from getting to them (like "hey, let's just add <foo> to the site, that should be easy right?"). I don't know how successful she'll be, but she's smart, focused, and organized enough that while it may take a while I'm sure it will make some impact. Point is, 50s and 60s is not too young to learn new skills, including tech skills. Arguably you have better perspective on which tech skills actually matter because of better life skills.
- neltnerb 14y ago
  I should also say that the 50 and 60 year old hackers I encounter at hacker spaces or in the course of my work are usually some of the most incredibly impressive people I ever encounter. I learned everything I know about analog electronics from a retired electrical engineer -- and I am vastly better at it from an intuitive side than anyone in my age group I've talked to. And I'm not even an EE; I only ever took two courses in the field (introduction, and microcontroller lab). Meanwhile, he's building state-of-the-art electron microscope accelerators and x-ray detectors in his garage. At the same time, he is not a fan of programming, and happily finds 20 somethings to deal with that stuff for him. Moral of that story -- do what you've spent your life developing the skills to do, and extend from there instead of trying to start from scratch. It's hard to start over at 60 or 70. It's not nearly as hard to push forward from where you are.
  - kanzure 14y ago
    I would like to meet this person. We need more people building electron microscopes in their garages. Could you hook me up?
nhebb 14y ago
For anyone hardware inclined, if there is an industry that needs to be disrupted it's the hearing aid industry. My dad had to get a new set, and I couldn't believe how much prescription hearing aids are. And the non-prescription are junk. My dad is extremely frugal, but even he pops for the prescription ones - hearing is just too important. Here's a recap of the market from Consumer Reports: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/12/hear-well-in-a-noisy-world/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/12/hear-well-in-a-no...
- justinph 14y ago
  You don't even have to be old to have this problem. I'm 31 and wear hearing aids due to tinitus -- $4000 for far less sophisticated tech than is in a phone from a decade ago. The medical devices industry is a total racket, but IMHO hearing aids are the worst of the worst.
  - mynameishere 14y ago
    That has got to be some devilish tinnitus.
  - harlanlewis 14y ago
    A friend of similar age has worn hearing aids his whole life, but has shared a somewhat different experience. While current-gen hearing aids are very expensive (~$9k), they can pair with his phone and function as bluetooth headphones for all the reasons you'd normally wear headphones (no mic, though). At least they could if his insurance covered the expense. Instead, he wears tech that's a few years outdated. Not terribly cool now, but hearing aids are becoming cyborg tech. Better hearing than your peers with broad device interoperability - it might be enough to make folks with decent hearing to consider buying aids, like athletes and lasik / performance contact lenses. We're not far from slightly-outdated hearing aids being pretty cool. And no, I'm not making light of his deafness - I'm just echoing his own excitement.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
berlinbrown 14y ago
I bet she is fun at parties.
- robbiet480 14y ago
  http://twitter.com/DanielleMorrill/status/302941928704602113 http://twitter.com/DanielleMorrill/status/302941928704602113
- dmor 14y ago
  Just so you know, because I take particular pride in it, I throw some of the best parties in tech. If you've ever been to a Twilio party, or various unnamed events/dinners or SXSW stuff, you'll know. No hard feelings, but you'll have to find some other turn of phrase for saying I must be a boring conversational partner for people who would rather turn off their brains. BOOM!
  - berlinbrown 14y ago
    I hope you didn't take my comment literally. Or look that much into it at all. Interesting.
    - dmor 14y ago
      I didn't take it at all
      - berlinbrown 14y ago
        Except to twitter
        rammark 14y ago
        Would you have started this if dmor was a man? No? Well then you're probably just being sexist and mean.
        14y ago
beatpanda 14y ago
HR and hiring software for companies that don't make software is so incredibly, gob-smackingly broken that it's disgusting. My dad lost his job in the Hostess bankruptcy (save yr Twinkies jokes) and seeing the difficulty of navigating the labyrinthian, poorly-designed interfaces set up by the kind of companies hiring stationary and facilities engineers was shocking. And a lot of it isn't just bad, it's literally broken, like, full of bugs that would preclude you from actually submitting a resume if you didn't have your kid around to think of a clever workaround. I think this is partly due to the fact that professions like my dad's are basically invisible to hackers, so even if you are making killer HR and hiring software, your sales department probably isn't even aware of some of these companies. He kept saying, over and over, "hey, you should start a company to fix this mess", but I can't fathom the idea of spending even 5 years doing something that boring (even though it would be incredibly lucrative). Any takers out there?
- unimpressive 14y ago
  Can you give an example of a bad interface for submitting resumes?
  - redmattred 14y ago
    Taleo, oracle peoplesoft, iCims
  - codegeek 14y ago
    Taleo. As bad as it can get.
    - girvo 14y ago
      When applying for a retail position, I had to write a user script to get my application to submit. It really is terrible. I got the job, at least.
  - beatpanda 14y ago
    Here's what my dad said: the resume submission systems for DST Output (this one is completely broken), Kaiser, Dignity Health, Sutter Health, and, shockingly, Stanford University, are particularly bad (I don't know who the vendors are). He said a big part of the frustration is the resume formatting requirement — some systems will only take resumes in either PDF or Word, and sometimes Word 97 or lower, and sometimes these requirements aren't explicit, or the application system will take a file format the HR department won't actually accept. He said another problem is the lack of an automatic "receipt", or some kind of response letting you know a resume has been received or when it's been rejected. He also said that in general, he feels like the automatic screening performed by some of these tracking systems (for instance, looking for key words from the job description) weeds out qualified applicants and selects for people that are best at gaming the software.
mion 14y ago
The problem with startups and older folks is that they're usually not good early adopters. And a lot of them are not very fond of tech in general. So, IMO it would be very hard to bring disruptive technology to a segment of the population that is very reluctant to change. Obviously this won't be the case for our generation.
- hnal943 14y ago
  Obviously this won't be the case for our generation. It won't? I often wonder what new technology my kids will get into in 30 years that I won't understand or care about. Obviously, it is different for geeks as we tend to keep up with technology better than the average person, but it seems naive to think that our generation as a whole is resistant to losing touch with the bleeding edge.
rckrd 14y ago
I'm sure this is relevant for a lot of people, but personally I didn't really identify with a lot of the points.
delinquentme 14y ago
They're going to die?
aklemm 14y ago
May I add another? Your parents are increasingly finding themselves irrelevant to younger people. While predictable, this is a great loss to the younger people, and perhaps a frustration for your parents. A mentoring network, content or career service that helps older people communicate with younger people may be useful.
timjahn 14y ago
Great post and completely agree. In general, I think more of us need to look at problems that "real people" have and how to solve them.
prawn 14y ago
I can imagine that Google or the Yellow Pages can be a bit of a confusing mess for older types. What if people could gift their parents access to a simple service directory with trustworthy agents who picked from, and made arrangements with, quality suppliers? Like a virtual assistant but who specialised in things like getting a reliable plumber around, or helping in the garden, or even just calling for a chat, etc.
aorshan 14y ago
I think this absolutely makes a lot of sense. Particularly the idea of getting outside the tech echo chamber. For me, I maintain a group of stringently non-technically inclined friends. They use facebook and that is about it. So I use my time with them to recalibrate my senses and understand where normal people are in terms of adoption. I always gain new perspective from those conversations.
ameister14 14y ago
It's really unfortunate that this is written so badly, as I think it makes some valid points.
pjungwir 14y ago
This is more like solving my grandparents' problems, but one idea I had is to help the elderly stay in touch with their grandkids by selling them tablets or netbooks that are customized to make it easy to check Facebook etc. You could sell them through retirement homes along with training sessions. Help people see photos of their grandkids! Another idea is to help the elderly tell their stories. It's a shame so many are passing away in silence. What about some way of helping retirement communities get their populations to write, perhaps by blogging? The customer here might be the retirement home, which would pay you to set up a community of blogs. It would be a way for members to write, and also give the retirement home something to show off.
tferris 14y ago
Solve your very own problems. Maybe you miss some opportunities but I've the highest motivation if I solve a personal problems since I am not thinking about how big is the market, how to target which demographics. No, I just want to build a nice product for myself and I am happy even if it's just me who will use it. Usually, these products get perfect and extremely well designed because you are the user yourself and care about every detail and at the same time you deploy and use a MVP very early since you don't care about anyone looking at your product. Worked for me and market is success is usually one step away. I couldn't work one second for a product where I won't be the user, I did it few times and it's awful. It could also be a psychological phenomena since when you do something just for yourself you don't put too much pressure on yourself and the product, you don't force success like becoming the market leader or getting venture capital -- you are relaxed and in the zone which are the best premises to build an awesome product (compare to 'The Inner Game of Tennis').
- Proleps 14y ago
  My problem is that I don't have any problems. All the software I need is already available in most Linux distributions. The only software I pay for is Games and Windows(which I need to play games).
skrebbel 14y ago
I doubt I'm the only one here who can honestly claim that his parents don't really have any problems at all.
bambax 14y ago
My folks are 81 and 82, they have iPhones, Kindles, cameras, camcorders, two computers (one each), lots of free time that they spend touring the world, and not many problems. Facetime usually doesn't work.
matthewwh 14y ago
You wouldn't believe the number of people who have spent their lives in a lucrative but creatively unfulfilling career. They hit retirement and their coiled creative spring just has to get out. The wisdom gained over a lifetime in the craft is like pure gold, but only if it is shared. Technology gives the custodians of these skills the opportunity to teach a large number of paying apprentices at once. Google Rob Cosman or Paul Sellers and you begin to get an idea of the potential. True craftsmanship has been prized for thousands of years, it's not about to dry up and blow away just because someone invented computers or flat pack furniture.

220 points by dmor 14y ago

hayksaakian 14y ago

I don't usually agree with the OP, but she's spot on with this one IMO.

anw 14y ago
Yes, I've run into a few of these points often enough to see that we really need to find a better way to bring ease of use and intuitive designs for technology aimed at people who did not grow up with it. Having moved from the east coast to the west, I often will try to find a way to get my mom to Skype/Google+ so we can see and talk to each other. However, it usually winds up turning into a phone call and me emailing pictures to her. I love all that technology has to offer, but at the same time I hate the perceived limitation that we've made leaps and bounds when things like the above still are an issue. *note: I'm speaking only about the benefit of consumer tech to parents/baby boomers, and not about things such as advancements in the medical field, automobiles, etc.
- jonpeda 14y ago
  This is the problem with the ad-supported walled-garden closed-system model. My grandma can't see my stuff on G+, due to its awful usability, but if they opened up a nice API, someone could build a client app suited to audiences like the 80+ set.
  - hayksaakian 14y ago
    iirc, they recently opened up a read only api.

jere 14y ago

>Your Parents Have Money Actually, the biggest problem among my parents is that they don't. My dad makes less than half what I do and he's incredibly knowledgeable, skilled, and hard working (a lot more than I am). If there's one thing I could do for him it'd be finding him a better paying job. But I don't know if there's any app that can fix being in a dying, underpaid industry. Sometimes I daydream about writing him a portfolio site or something, but I have no idea if that would help.

revorad 14y ago
Do you mind sharing what skills your dad has? Maybe you could help him teach those skills to other people who would be willing to pay for them? Platforms like Udemy, Skillshare and training courses like patio11's deliver a lot of value for some people. Even if your dad's skills are in a specific dying industry, he probably has some transferable skills which others want to learn.
- jere 14y ago
  For lack of a better term, he's a woodworker. He spent decades building really snazzy museum exhibits and booths for trade shows. He's usually identified as the most skilled person in whichever shop he goes to, but there doesn't seem to be a very high ceiling (again, I make below the US average for developers and he makes less than half that) Here's an example: http://www.designdimension.com/projects/cranium-connection-head-structure http://www.designdimension.com/projects/cranium-connection-h... Is that something somebody would pay to learn? I don't know. Maybe.
  - revorad 14y ago
    Wow, that's beautiful work. I would be very very surprised if there's no one who would pay good money to learn that.
  - WalterBright 14y ago
    Wouldn't such skill be transferrable to working with sheet metal? I bet the business of restoring and creating custom hot rods should pay well.
  - revorad 14y ago
    Just had another thought: 3D printing is a hot growing field of work. Can your dad not learn to apply his skills there?
    - jere 14y ago
      Wow, somehow I never thought of that. Maybe I need to save up for a makerbot.

larsberg 14y ago

The retirement problem is particularly interesting. There are folks like my father who has spent > 40 years in the foundry industry about to retire, for whom there will probably be serious demand for part-time consulting (to answer questions for the 3 or so 20-somethings straight out of IIT they hire to replace him). There's probably a business there in the connecting people (possibly over Skype, etc.) and handling all the billing and tax-related issues for mostly-retired people who are collecting social security and are computer-friendly but not heavily computer-savvy. I'm sure my dad would use it... from a nice part of the country where there are a ton of golf courses.

tokenadult 14y ago

Ah! Finally a submission about what hackers can do to find business opportunities for which my age and lack of experience hacking is no barrier to me having something to say. As mentioned in the second reply comment here, the "your parents have money" comment is mistaken relative to many of the hackers reading this site. A lot of young hackers, it appears to me, are leveraging their parents' investment in their own education to move into occupations with high economic returns, after the parents didn't have the same opportunity in their generation. On the other hand, "someday you will be like your parents" is a probable future that most people forget too readily, so the point is well taken that if you want to build a better world for yourself in the future, you might get a reality check on your plans by building a better world for your parents today. I can't speak to the issue of what single parents need. I know I would dread having to use any current kind of dating site if (God forbid) my wife predeceased me. Health information is always popular here on Hacker News, even among the young participants, so it stands to reason that anything that can help people a generation older than you are keep good health must have wide appeal. Even in an era of steadily increasing life expectancy at all ages, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-why-we-die-global-life-expectancy http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2810516/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2810516/ people still like to be healthier rather than sicker, and to live longer rather than die sooner.

jonpeda 14y ago
> I know I would dread having to use any current kind of dating site if (God forbid) my wife predeceased me. Huh, I know some wonderful success stories for this use case.
bloaf 14y ago
When you say health, all I can think of is a fitbit for older folks. I wonder if a small device like that could collect enough different kinds of data to be useful to doctors.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  Given that someone was looking at getting medically relevant data out of patterns in the amount of time it takes people to answer the phone, I expect there would be plenty of useful information there. The problem is making the relevant information accessible and understandable.

RyanZAG 14y ago

Just a warning: you are going to have a very difficult time marketing to retirees if that is your target market. Hacker News or blog spam through techy circles on Facebook is simply not going to cut it - you're going to need massive funding and do television, newspaper and physical signposts in order to hit any kind of critical mass for that audience. Good luck, and may huge amounts of venture capital be with you!

bloaf 14y ago
Maybe you could convince kids (read: 20-somethings) that your invention is the perfect gift to buy for their parents.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  Or you can get word of mouth working on a per-retirement-home basis...
hayksaakian 14y ago
Or go even more meta, and design a modern way of marketing to older people.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
egb 14y ago
Indeed. I make iPhone/iPad games that are somewhat aimed at seniors, and there is essentially zero point in my following the usual paths of hoping for reviews from gaming or iOS blogs that seniors don't even know exist. Word of mouth is my savior :-)

radley 14y ago

Over 50? I'm 44 & doing my own start-up and expect to have a good time working hard for the next 20 years. It's fun and gives me something to focus on. Meanwhile, my mom had a stroke 6 months ago and lost some communication skills, so she needs to keep writing / talking to people to recover. She's semi-tech savvy, but not professionally, so we brought her on to develop our user manuals. Aside from start-up user development skills, by the time she's done here she'll also be adept at Wordpress & UserVoice.

10dpd 14y ago

Please re-read 'Crossing the Chasm'. If you want to create a truly innovative business, its better to target early adopters/innovators than people traditionally known to be conservative with new products. If you want to rehash existing ideas (e.g. an affiliate network thats easy to use) then this idea/model works fine.

dmor 14y ago
You should come back and check out all the progress we've made on going way beyond an affiliate network. I'm writing this post to think, and solving my parents problems is certainly top of mind for me. I called my Mom about 30 minutes ago and she told me she had just been searching on the Internet for movies to go see, since it is raining in Seattle today and she can't ride the horses. Helping people figure out how to live well and spend their time and money in a way that leaves them satisfied is a universal problem, and certainly one my parents have.
unimpressive 14y ago
I've mentioned this before, but my idea of a sexy business is one that makes money and helps people. By this metric it's not actually a requirement that I do anything new.[0] [0]: Or even that it's anything different from a traditional small business.

neltnerb 14y ago

My mom was one of those part-time people for 22 years (younger brother), and I'm very proud of her. She got out of college with some basic understanding of computers, but didn't really get much opportunity to become a technie at work. Now, at 53, she is teaching herself Python so that she has a better understanding of the kinds of issues tech people she is interfacing with from the management side encounter so that she can better understand what they're saying and also better prevent poor decisions from higher up from getting to them (like "hey, let's just add <foo> to the site, that should be easy right?"). I don't know how successful she'll be, but she's smart, focused, and organized enough that while it may take a while I'm sure it will make some impact. Point is, 50s and 60s is not too young to learn new skills, including tech skills. Arguably you have better perspective on which tech skills actually matter because of better life skills.

neltnerb 14y ago
I should also say that the 50 and 60 year old hackers I encounter at hacker spaces or in the course of my work are usually some of the most incredibly impressive people I ever encounter. I learned everything I know about analog electronics from a retired electrical engineer -- and I am vastly better at it from an intuitive side than anyone in my age group I've talked to. And I'm not even an EE; I only ever took two courses in the field (introduction, and microcontroller lab). Meanwhile, he's building state-of-the-art electron microscope accelerators and x-ray detectors in his garage. At the same time, he is not a fan of programming, and happily finds 20 somethings to deal with that stuff for him. Moral of that story -- do what you've spent your life developing the skills to do, and extend from there instead of trying to start from scratch. It's hard to start over at 60 or 70. It's not nearly as hard to push forward from where you are.
- kanzure 14y ago
  I would like to meet this person. We need more people building electron microscopes in their garages. Could you hook me up?

nhebb 14y ago

For anyone hardware inclined, if there is an industry that needs to be disrupted it's the hearing aid industry. My dad had to get a new set, and I couldn't believe how much prescription hearing aids are. And the non-prescription are junk. My dad is extremely frugal, but even he pops for the prescription ones - hearing is just too important. Here's a recap of the market from Consumer Reports: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/12/hear-well-in-a-noisy-world/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/12/hear-well-in-a-no...

justinph 14y ago
You don't even have to be old to have this problem. I'm 31 and wear hearing aids due to tinitus -- $4000 for far less sophisticated tech than is in a phone from a decade ago. The medical devices industry is a total racket, but IMHO hearing aids are the worst of the worst.
- mynameishere 14y ago
  That has got to be some devilish tinnitus.
- harlanlewis 14y ago
  A friend of similar age has worn hearing aids his whole life, but has shared a somewhat different experience. While current-gen hearing aids are very expensive (~$9k), they can pair with his phone and function as bluetooth headphones for all the reasons you'd normally wear headphones (no mic, though). At least they could if his insurance covered the expense. Instead, he wears tech that's a few years outdated. Not terribly cool now, but hearing aids are becoming cyborg tech. Better hearing than your peers with broad device interoperability - it might be enough to make folks with decent hearing to consider buying aids, like athletes and lasik / performance contact lenses. We're not far from slightly-outdated hearing aids being pretty cool. And no, I'm not making light of his deafness - I'm just echoing his own excitement.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

berlinbrown 14y ago

I bet she is fun at parties.

robbiet480 14y ago
http://twitter.com/DanielleMorrill/status/302941928704602113 http://twitter.com/DanielleMorrill/status/302941928704602113
dmor 14y ago
Just so you know, because I take particular pride in it, I throw some of the best parties in tech. If you've ever been to a Twilio party, or various unnamed events/dinners or SXSW stuff, you'll know. No hard feelings, but you'll have to find some other turn of phrase for saying I must be a boring conversational partner for people who would rather turn off their brains. BOOM!
- berlinbrown 14y ago
  I hope you didn't take my comment literally. Or look that much into it at all. Interesting.
  - dmor 14y ago
    I didn't take it at all
    - berlinbrown 14y ago
      Except to twitter
      - rammark 14y ago
        Would you have started this if dmor was a man? No? Well then you're probably just being sexist and mean.
        14y ago

beatpanda 14y ago

HR and hiring software for companies that don't make software is so incredibly, gob-smackingly broken that it's disgusting. My dad lost his job in the Hostess bankruptcy (save yr Twinkies jokes) and seeing the difficulty of navigating the labyrinthian, poorly-designed interfaces set up by the kind of companies hiring stationary and facilities engineers was shocking. And a lot of it isn't just bad, it's literally broken, like, full of bugs that would preclude you from actually submitting a resume if you didn't have your kid around to think of a clever workaround. I think this is partly due to the fact that professions like my dad's are basically invisible to hackers, so even if you are making killer HR and hiring software, your sales department probably isn't even aware of some of these companies. He kept saying, over and over, "hey, you should start a company to fix this mess", but I can't fathom the idea of spending even 5 years doing something that boring (even though it would be incredibly lucrative). Any takers out there?

unimpressive 14y ago
Can you give an example of a bad interface for submitting resumes?
- redmattred 14y ago
  Taleo, oracle peoplesoft, iCims
- codegeek 14y ago
  Taleo. As bad as it can get.
  - girvo 14y ago
    When applying for a retail position, I had to write a user script to get my application to submit. It really is terrible. I got the job, at least.
- beatpanda 14y ago
  Here's what my dad said: the resume submission systems for DST Output (this one is completely broken), Kaiser, Dignity Health, Sutter Health, and, shockingly, Stanford University, are particularly bad (I don't know who the vendors are). He said a big part of the frustration is the resume formatting requirement — some systems will only take resumes in either PDF or Word, and sometimes Word 97 or lower, and sometimes these requirements aren't explicit, or the application system will take a file format the HR department won't actually accept. He said another problem is the lack of an automatic "receipt", or some kind of response letting you know a resume has been received or when it's been rejected. He also said that in general, he feels like the automatic screening performed by some of these tracking systems (for instance, looking for key words from the job description) weeds out qualified applicants and selects for people that are best at gaming the software.

mion 14y ago

The problem with startups and older folks is that they're usually not good early adopters. And a lot of them are not very fond of tech in general. So, IMO it would be very hard to bring disruptive technology to a segment of the population that is very reluctant to change. Obviously this won't be the case for our generation.

hnal943 14y ago
Obviously this won't be the case for our generation. It won't? I often wonder what new technology my kids will get into in 30 years that I won't understand or care about. Obviously, it is different for geeks as we tend to keep up with technology better than the average person, but it seems naive to think that our generation as a whole is resistant to losing touch with the bleeding edge.

rckrd 14y ago

I'm sure this is relevant for a lot of people, but personally I didn't really identify with a lot of the points.

delinquentme 14y ago

They're going to die?

aklemm 14y ago

May I add another? Your parents are increasingly finding themselves irrelevant to younger people. While predictable, this is a great loss to the younger people, and perhaps a frustration for your parents. A mentoring network, content or career service that helps older people communicate with younger people may be useful.

timjahn 14y ago

Great post and completely agree. In general, I think more of us need to look at problems that "real people" have and how to solve them.

prawn 14y ago

I can imagine that Google or the Yellow Pages can be a bit of a confusing mess for older types. What if people could gift their parents access to a simple service directory with trustworthy agents who picked from, and made arrangements with, quality suppliers? Like a virtual assistant but who specialised in things like getting a reliable plumber around, or helping in the garden, or even just calling for a chat, etc.

aorshan 14y ago

I think this absolutely makes a lot of sense. Particularly the idea of getting outside the tech echo chamber. For me, I maintain a group of stringently non-technically inclined friends. They use facebook and that is about it. So I use my time with them to recalibrate my senses and understand where normal people are in terms of adoption. I always gain new perspective from those conversations.

ameister14 14y ago

It's really unfortunate that this is written so badly, as I think it makes some valid points.

pjungwir 14y ago

This is more like solving my grandparents' problems, but one idea I had is to help the elderly stay in touch with their grandkids by selling them tablets or netbooks that are customized to make it easy to check Facebook etc. You could sell them through retirement homes along with training sessions. Help people see photos of their grandkids! Another idea is to help the elderly tell their stories. It's a shame so many are passing away in silence. What about some way of helping retirement communities get their populations to write, perhaps by blogging? The customer here might be the retirement home, which would pay you to set up a community of blogs. It would be a way for members to write, and also give the retirement home something to show off.

tferris 14y ago

Solve your very own problems. Maybe you miss some opportunities but I've the highest motivation if I solve a personal problems since I am not thinking about how big is the market, how to target which demographics. No, I just want to build a nice product for myself and I am happy even if it's just me who will use it. Usually, these products get perfect and extremely well designed because you are the user yourself and care about every detail and at the same time you deploy and use a MVP very early since you don't care about anyone looking at your product. Worked for me and market is success is usually one step away. I couldn't work one second for a product where I won't be the user, I did it few times and it's awful. It could also be a psychological phenomena since when you do something just for yourself you don't put too much pressure on yourself and the product, you don't force success like becoming the market leader or getting venture capital -- you are relaxed and in the zone which are the best premises to build an awesome product (compare to 'The Inner Game of Tennis').

Proleps 14y ago
My problem is that I don't have any problems. All the software I need is already available in most Linux distributions. The only software I pay for is Games and Windows(which I need to play games).

skrebbel 14y ago

I doubt I'm the only one here who can honestly claim that his parents don't really have any problems at all.

bambax 14y ago

My folks are 81 and 82, they have iPhones, Kindles, cameras, camcorders, two computers (one each), lots of free time that they spend touring the world, and not many problems. Facetime usually doesn't work.

matthewwh 14y ago

You wouldn't believe the number of people who have spent their lives in a lucrative but creatively unfulfilling career. They hit retirement and their coiled creative spring just has to get out. The wisdom gained over a lifetime in the craft is like pure gold, but only if it is shared. Technology gives the custodians of these skills the opportunity to teach a large number of paying apprentices at once. Google Rob Cosman or Paul Sellers and you begin to get an idea of the potential. True craftsmanship has been prized for thousands of years, it's not about to dry up and blow away just because someone invented computers or flat pack furniture.