exelius

69 ms·

631.
by exelius 9y ago
As someone who attended CMU for an MBA and took product management courses in the SCS, it's likely worth it. The classes I took from SCS around use-case driven design, project management of software projects, and platform strategy were
632.
by exelius 9y ago
> The media hegemony broke absolutely the moment we could get the hell away from them. Now people watch TV because they want to, not because there's no other way to get there. I wouldn't be so sure about that -- I would venture
633.
by exelius 9y ago
I work in this industry, and let me assure you: TV is most definitely dying. Or rather, the traditional business model where you subscribe to a huge bundle for pay TV is dying. That's a good thing. The thing is, it's dying in a lo
634.
by exelius 9y ago
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. But at the same time, none of the existing insurance companies have good enough analytics to handle this well. The thought is that "maybe Oscar can find a better way? Or at the very least build a softwar
635.
by exelius 9y ago
The thought is that, especially with expensive chronic illnesses like diabetes or heart disease, getting the patient to stick to their treatment plan has a dramatic effect on costs. Fewer hospital visits means drastically lower costs, and h
636.
by exelius 9y ago
I can see that. I have a pair of Bose QuietComfort 30s and they are great - only downside is that they're too big. I'm worried I would lose the AirPods though.
637.
by exelius 10y ago
Disappointed this isn't a chainsword. The chainsword is the epitome of the "I'm 12 and I think this is badass" vibe that permeates 40k (disclaimer, I love the 40k universe precisely because it is so over-the-top corny).
638.
by exelius 10y ago
Well, that's the thing... Microsoft wasn't selling directly to these companies. They had a network of resellers and system integrators. And basically, outside of a few niche industries, businesses basically had to use Microsoft by
639.
by exelius 10y ago
It's hard to build a customer base when Facebook can just come in, copy you, and corner 95% of the market on the day they release. This is the exact same advantage that Microsoft had in the enterprise market. Sure, competitors could
640.
by exelius 10y ago
> Plently of people run successful OSS under the same name. Disappointing. But those projects aren't true OSS in the way that something like Docker / Moby needs to be. Your Vagrant example is one of them; Vagrant is a useful to
641.
by exelius 10y ago
The point is that these Indian outsourcing firms would hire a white face as a sales person and use them to sell the exact same people on L1 visas (which are temporary work visas; but easy to get) at foreign rates and ship most of the work o
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by exelius 10y ago
In the business we call this "leverage". The whole business is a pyramid of lower skilled workers billing high rates while the "talent" works at a loss and does all of the actual work. You drum out the ones who can'
643.
by exelius 10y ago
Nothing is up; it's what happens when companies have to transition from Silicon Valley "bro" culture to a real business where you manage risk like any other business variable. IMO Uber's problem is that they were 5-10 ye
644.
by exelius 10y ago
Oh, I'm not even talking about problems identifying good developers -- even if they find them, HR is so slow and rigid in their process that things like salary negotiations take months, in which time even mediocre candidates have usual
645.
by exelius 10y ago
HR at most companies is filled with people who are too terrible at anything else, so they get shoved into HR. This situation above (at a telecom turned business service provider) is a very common problem -- especially at companies with a la
646.
by exelius 10y ago
Everything you mention is something that is the concern of a product manager, not an engineering lead. It becomes the engineering lead's problem when the product manager tells them it is. A huge problem at a lot of companies is when
647.
by exelius 10y ago
Easier to just rebadge some crap from China and buy the positive reviews.
648.
by exelius 10y ago
Ad budgets kinda are fixed. That's how large ad buyers operate -- a product has a certain marketing budget, and an expected lift for a campaign. If you get more than that lift, you get a bonus. Less, meh, it happens (more often than no
649.
by exelius 10y ago
It is in relation to ad budgets. Consumers only have so much attention span. It's been over-saturated for years; more adtech doesn't lead to better conversion -- it's just smoke and mirrors so as networks can justify rates wi
650.
by exelius 10y ago
The media fetishized a "techno-genius" that never really existed. Design and development are two very different skills, and it's rare to find a person who is good at both. But all things equal, a good product person can make
651.
by exelius 10y ago
Agree 100%. Advertising is a zero sum game. If an advertiser's budget is $5, they will spend $5. They will spend $5 on as many dumb ads as they can get, and they will spend that $5 using very targeted means if available. There's a
652.
by exelius 10y ago
It was never about the code. It was always about the products.
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by exelius 10y ago
So get a better IRC client? Really not hard to do things like syntax formatting and auto link follow (GUI versions of IRCII had plugins for this in the late 90s, so it's not like it's even a novel idea).
654.
by exelius 10y ago
Actually (and I do this for a living as a management consultant) we are pushing all of our clients to an Agile operating model. There are many reasons for this, but the primary one being that consumers now expect to interact with all comp
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by exelius 10y ago
Twitter has always been a marketing platform for large brands. The number of meaningful tweets I see these days is just drowned out by people discussing global brands or whatever manufactured controversy is running around this week (that st
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by exelius 10y ago
The video game industry is the new movie industry -- except nobody is unionized. The film industry is notorious for this crap as well; look at the Sausage Party controversy for a recent example. Honestly, a programmer on a video game is not
657.
by exelius 10y ago
But they're with a group of like-minded people whose rules reinforce many of their other NIMBY tendencies (i.e. no homeless shelters, adult bookstores, garish homes.) They agree with most of the rules, but because they want more cont
658.
by exelius 10y ago
You can only optimize variables (and outcomes) under your control. Coordination is hard, and that's marketing's job to figure out. If the software is better than anything else available, then the user is optimizing their time wi
659.
by exelius 10y ago
Basically people move out to the suburbs so they can have more control of the area around them.
660.
by exelius 10y ago
Unfortunately, with all of the major problems in the world today, the US is too much to blame to be able to solve them. We were seen as a neutral force around much of the world in the post-colonial era (we were a colony who threw off our em

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