HN user
I work on projects in Google Travel.
I think the "backlash" is a symptom, not the cause.
The cause likely has a lot more to do with an unnatural supply constraint imposed previously as well as very little in the way of a public transportation infrastructure that would better enable workers (both tech and other) to live where they would like, at a price they want to pay.
As a power-excel user I agree with you that Sheets isn't quite there yet. Trying to use the same shortcut keys that I'm used to often makes me want to bang my head against a wall, either because they don't work at all or because even if they do, it's not as responsive.
However, the pace of improvement is one that I think you should definitely consider before saying "never." Excel hasn't fundamentally changed for me since 2003 (outside of being able to more easily handle larger datasets from 65K+), so it seems like a fixed target while sheets continues to move closer (still with large gaps ahead!).
If I need to do financial modeling, I'll likely continue to use excel. However, for many low-touch projects, I've almost completely switched over to sheets, which wasn't the case even a year ago.
Hopefully, people can work together to what I think could be 2-3 good outcomes that help alleviate some of these very real problems:
1. Public Transportation: both inter & intra-city transportation is very poor. It's extremely hard to travel between neighborhoods in San Francisco, and it's a huge reason people rely so much on Lyft and other providers in the city. Also, it's really difficult to travel between SF and Oakland (as well as other cities). Creating better / more infrastructure that connects these two should help ease supply constraints that cause these price spikes in the first place. Not sure how feasible this is...especially looking at other cities experience in public transportation (example: bay bridge).
2. More supply. One of the effects of previous legislation to keep the SF "neighborhood feel" was that it constrained new supply coming into the market. Unfortunately, it takes a few years for new units to come into the market, and it's obvious it's not keeping pace with demand. There of course needs to be a balance vs. keeping SF's historic appeal, but maybe the previous compromise leaned too heavily against putting up new units.
3. Government subsidies / rent control to help ease rapid price hikes. I'm not as big of a fan of these, but largely because I don't quite understand all the economic/social effects.
good news:
UPDATE: Rodriguez writes that the "Google employee" was in fact a union organizer, staging a confrontation.
http://boingboing.net/2013/12/09/tech-worker-to-san-francisc...
Still doesn't solve the very real issue of relationship with SF community however.
“My primary motivation,” Thoman said, “is because I don’t like playing games at low resolution.”
I thought that quote was great. The modding community always amazes me for their frequent dedication without any kind of financial reward or recognition.
"...attracted the attention of Osama Bedier, the former head of Google Wallet, who’s an investor in Coin. Bedier spent years attempting to make Wallet the NFC payments standard of future phones, but Google abandoned his work to pivot the product into yet another PayPal competitor. "[Bedier] sees scale at Coin … where he didn’t see scale in current solutions," a company spokesperson said on Bedier’s behalf. And for what it’s worth, Parashar says he hopes to develop a way to let users activate Coin (or disable the "lost" feature) even when a phone’s not around."
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/14/5103820/coin-electronic-c...
It looks like how it lets you claim your money without your bank account details is by processing a refund. Don't know how they did it, but it's very cool.
I hate to say it, but if I ran an art stand, I'd put up a few around central park right now.
Wouldn't be surprised to see some stands going up to make money off the "halo effect" here.
Here's the link to the Google Play Developer Policy
"I am struck by just how many people there are working there on the floor. There seem to be too many whenever I'm there."
Maybe that's more more of a load problem? They are probably there for the peak rush periods, and I would imagine forecasting those accurately is almost impossible, so you operate with a buffer. Lower wages enable them to be more flexible in handling these peak loads.
In terms of your point about the financial impact, a quick look at the SG&A of Walmart (20%) shows a big difference vs. Costco's (~9%). I don't have the breakout of employee wages, but it does seem like it's definitely a more labor intensive model. Then again, they probably could afford to pay higher wages, but the problem is that customers haven't given them a financial incentive to do so. I feel like the point the author was trying to make was a good one...many people that write about these issues should acknowledge the different business models instead of just quickly pointing at Costco and saying the model works with higher wages.
It's a bit like a game. It's the investors job to eliminate false positives and vs. a first time founder, investors will typically have an advantage in that they've been through this many times before.
Trying to "beat the system" is like trying to beat investors at what they would on average be the best at doing and potentially sending inadvertent false positive signals caused by the nervousness of being new to fundraising.
If you focus on what PG recommends, you eliminate a lot of that friction since you eliminate the nervousness.
My tl;dr: In the fundraising lottery, it's easier to sell investors a ticket than trying to convince them you have the winning combination.
Love the indie game movement but think it'll take awhile for people to adjust to the higher failure rate that this will naturally spawn.
I'd really love to be able to see an MMORPG take on politics like Civilization did. Would be interesting to see what happens...kinda Lord of the Flies-ish.
Good to see more ways to share internet experiences with real-life people. Wasn't meebo working on some sort of web check-in thing? Wonder if there's something in the works around that, beyond just their hello advertising bar.
The point I take away is a little bit beyond just realizing that you're lucky. That's important, and the people I've met that I consider truly successful (ones I would consider as role models), generally realize this.
However, I think we can take this further...the only variable that we have under our control is effort. Since luck is an outside force, you might as well maximize this one variable that's still under your control so that you have the best odds.
Was a little worried about if this was true or not as I was surprised by how small a story this is.
Another article about it (even fewer details):
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-28/facebook-to-star...
I agree with your statement as it perceives to larger companies, but for start-ups, if I were an investor, I would actually want founders to "cash-out" at least a little.
Assuming I've done my due diligence on the dedication of the team, the last thing I want is for a founder to be focused on personal finances. Otherwise, they might be too focused on immediate monetization instead of growth.
Don't think it's just weekend press, and I don't think the investor community thinks of it that way either. It's sending a statement that they don't necessarily care about rewarding their investors. We won't really know what happens until MS isn't around to support the price.
I'm excited to see what happens when you have a company that explicitly lets investors know that they're out to build products, not manage investor relations.
Well, I'm not sure this is true. You typically want to have a strong IPO to generate momentum for your company and shape the public's perception. Perhaps this is different because so much was trading in private markets before the IPO, but it does seem like perhaps they should have priced around the $36 range. Now the story over the weekend is
"Facebook fails to live up to the hype" http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/05/19/2150253/facebook-fa...
"Facebook Fails Day-One Pop, Lags Behind Google" http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-18/facebook-failing...
Had they priced it a bit lower and left some money on the table, you likely would have had enough positive momentum to probably maintain a 10-15% pop.
Does this matter for the company? Probably not. From my very limited experiences, the quality of people at facebook seems generally very high, and the culture seems focused on building product, not managing investor perception. Big picture, it's just a blip, but on the margin, it wasn't the ideal outcome.
We know it was MS that's supporting them at that psychologically important $38 figure, but that $2.3B figure is just speculation. Still, I'm sure there are some very nervous traders this weekend over at MS. Would not be surprised to see a lot of shorts on stocks like Yelp, Zynga as a hedge.
What a disaster this IPO was (for the banks, not for facebook). Though, I'm sure the people at Facebook aren't exactly happy with the way things went and all the (unfair?) negative press / scrutiny that they will receive now.
The point I thought was interesting was how Mark Cuban talked about the Innovator's Dilemma for many universities that don't believe in or support online learning.
I'd venture to say the education model experienced this same sort of ID (Innovator's Dilemma) when writing/print became available to the masses.
What was traditionally taught via in-person sessions (e.g. Socrates => Plato => Aristotle) could now be written down and distributed. Sure, if you optimize for depth of learning, you won't get anywhere near the quality of having Aristotle teach you in person. Then again, unless your last name is "The Great" (Alexander), you're probably not going to get Aristotle as your teacher.
What we're seeing now is remarkably similar. You have elite legacy institutions available to a few, while technology has progressed enough to make it available to the masses. I understand the point about how great a "signal" it sends to potential employers and why that's necessary, but now that more and more of your work can be online, it's easier than ever before to send the right signals.
Wow. I'm sure he's been having one of the worst periods of his life right now. Now that he's out of the Yahoo investor spotlight, I hope he talks about this ordeal from his point of view. I'd love to hear it. The comp sci degree really seems like a small lie that just snowballed into something huge.
Ha, you inspired me to write this:
"No I won't Be Your Business Co-Founder"
http://arnoldhur.tumblr.com/post/22794390635/no-i-wont-be-yo...
I don't feel any pity for this guy from a personal point of view, and I can only hope he learns a lesson because of this instead of going down a darker path of more hate.
However, I still have real issues and concerns with him being jailed for making a racist comment. This seems an awful lot like a slippery slope that we don't want to go down. Any law that restricts what we can say or think scares me when information continues to become easier to pass along into the "public domain."
What I thought could be a step in the right direction was Gilt's partnership with GQ. I envisioned a GQ magazine that was actually interactive, meaning each piece of clothing worn could be tagged with a link to purchase said piece of clothing, or at least get taken to a useful google search about it.
Instead what I saw was more of the same in large corporate partnerships...only one page would be dedicated to the actual items you can purchase. If you clicked on any of the items, you were actually taken to Gilt's Park and Bond store completely outside of the app.
Too bad. i'd really be interested in creating a Magazine using Pinterest, with the business model being links to affiliates.
I agree. You try to do everything because you realize you've done so little during the time you've had.
I guess that's the normal way of being though. It seems like it is every child's fate to not appreciate their parents enough until it is too late, and to repeat this same cycle when they have children of their own.
Spot on. My favorite moments are when the person joining an in person meeting via conference call tells everybody that they can't hear. Usually, everyone just looks around awkwardly and somehow silently agrees to ignore that person.
Awesome. Now this is biz-dev:
Another major issue is that they were late to the party with their digital cameras. Once all smartphones had decent cameras, the niche they carved in easy to use snapshooter cameras became displaced while those companies that focused on digital SLRs boomed.
A smaller SLR segment boomed as the costs of distribution fell due to the internet, rewarding content creators while phone cameras becoming just as good and a lot easier to use for the typical snapshooter.
It almost reads like a case study in "Innovator's Dilemma."
Before you lose any more nights losing sleep about this idea you have and its third or fourth iteration, maybe you should just release the idea in its original form and see how people react. I'm sure your idea is great, but I worry that it's a perfect solution to an imperfect userbase...meaning people value worthless, soundbite comments more than well thought out responses.
It's kinda like how people complain about how politics are only about soundbites. Sure, it's great to argue that among friends, but who really spends the time understanding the facts about every issue a candidate debates?