mfrommil

> I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team

Part of it is cost, but a lot is culture and leadership. Streaming (especially live) is one of the toughest areas to maintain a good user experience. I've led Streaming Product teams for years. Product teams almost always needs to deliver growth, which comes in the form of new features, monetization, and other changes. But the user cares most about the core experience - did the video start playing without a delay? Were there buffering issues? Audio playback out of sync? Issues are very noticeable, and sometimes very difficult to test proactively for. Product needs to find this balance, and can not go 100% all in on growth and neglect the not sexy stuff. If the whole Product/Engineering/Test org is not aligned on stability/QoE being a top priority, it can degrade very quickly after a few releases for a streaming app.

For those interested in the story, this is a fantastic podcast episode on the history of TSMC.

https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc

Thanks, you're right . Edited it

This is rough napkin math, no need to downvote if anyone knows the real number and this is way off :)

Meta 2023 ad revenue was $131 billion. To make it easy, let's assume an even spread for # of users and ad revenue generation per hour/minute of the day and day of the year (which I'm sure is not the case).

This would be:

$358 million per day

$15 million per hour

$249k per minute

This also assume a minute down won't be somewhat or totally offset by a spike in users when it comes back online.

A much better UX would be clear error messaging informing users that the service is down and there is no problem with their individual account.

This would prevent people from panicking they've been hacked and/or unnecessarily resetting their password.

My prediction is that to be competitive, companies will eventually need to rely on AI-produced code to some extent or risk being slower and less efficient than competitors. It would be like not using email or messaging and only using snail mail for all written communication.

But AI is nowhere close to perfect now, and will have flaws for a long time. Having AI write code is like having a so-so junior engineer, who can complete the task, but makes mistakes, so needs their code reviewed closely. And is unable to architect anything complex, that still needs to be done by the leads/managers/senior folks.

So more and more of the simple, low complexity coding tasks will be done by AI, while the value of importance of senior engineers will be as high as ever, since they need to oversee the AI's outputs.

What I wonder is how junior engineers, who will be starting their careers out as more expensive or weaker coders to AI, will get the experience necessary to become the senior engineers that need to guide/review the AI's work?

Agreed. Probably could be a much better UX for handling a mass outage like this. Graceful, clear error messaging that FB login is down would be better than the current UI.

Triggering millions of people to unnecessarily reset their password yet still be unable to login is not a great UX. This seems like one of those cases that's high impact when it does happen, never likely to occur on any given day, but likely to happen at some point; probably just wasn't much focus put on handling a case like this.

Roadmaps come in many different flavors depending on the company/culture/processes/etc. For an org where roadmaps are more formal/solidified - a healthy level of "product discovery" should be happening before items are put on the product roadmap. We do it this way at my current company (am a Product Director, leading multiple Product teams). When items are put on the roadmap, scope may not be 100% final, but there is a relatively high level of certainty for what's in/out of scope based on customer & business value, as well as clear prioritization based on value/effort. And for larger scope/high priority items, they've already been aligned to a good extent across key stakeholders & partner product/engineering teams before formally being put on the roadmap.

Thank you for suggesting this. One of the most interesting podcast episodes I've ever listened to. The background of Chang/TSMC is fascinating. Lots of lessons to be learned regardless of industry. While Chang is a technical genius, my main takeaway was that his smartest move might have been seeing the overall strategic picture / value chain of the industry and seeing the long term opportunity. A good reminder that it's always critical to deeply understand your current (or potential) customers and their needs and problems.

This has been my go to weather site since I heard of it last year. I've yet to find another website or app with the variety of detailed radar views that windy has, and seems to be extremely accurate.

Have several years experience dealing with supply chain from the retailer side in the past, and your comment is spot on.

Anything that is: expected to be in demand during Q4/Xmas season, manufactured in Asia, electronics, etc., demand planning and orders are in minimum 3-6 months in advance.

Even if a retailer wants more supply, many manufacturers are extremely hesitant to overproduce.

Here's some rough napkin math to help illustrate the cost of being overstock (caveat: I have no idea actual costs of video games, using best guess), applies to both retailers and manufacturers:

$60 MSRP Switch game, cost to retailer: $48 ($12 profit/unit)

Let's say a retailer orders 100k units of a game in Q2 for the upcoming holiday season, but sells only 70k units during Q4. 70k * $12 = $840k profit. Meanwhile, 30k * $48 = $1.4M of inventory is sitting there, that cash is tied up so the company can't buy inventory of new games releasing in the future, and there's some non-trivial cost for each subsequent month that merchandise sits unsold in the warehouse. That's for under-selling forecast by 30%... now imagine if you're off by 50% or more an any individual game.

Heard one of the Warby Parker founders speak once, and he mentioned a similar process at their company. I believe once a week all employees anonymously rated their satisfaction 1-10. He was very bought into the thought that "happy employees = productive employees". He said the weekly ratings was a very powerful tool for the executive team to get a feel for how the team was feeling, and if they could push harder or needed to ease up. Compared with the alternative of waiting to see resignation numbers go up, seemed like a pretty brilliant idea to me.

This was many years ago so apologies if some details are a bit off, but the gist of the story has stuck with me over the years.

It depends on what the process is for.

Regulatory / legal compliance? Solid process = good

Non-customer-facing repeatable operations? Solid process = good

Financial controls (with the right level of flexibility for smaller/quick decisions to be made)? Process = good

Restricting creative/knowledge worker teams - whether design, product, marketing, engineering - with over-burdensome "process for the sake of the process" = quick way to lose good talent and kill good ideas before they come to life

Great to see more competition in this space.

Would be nice to see currency pairs not currently supported by other services (like wise, etc.)

If I was going to transfer 4 or 5 digits of $$, even if I save a couple bucks of fees, I would choose the more trustworthy option (e.g. Wise has thousands of reviews across websites, social media, etc.), even if it means an extra bit in fees. But if you can support currency pairs that aren't supported by the existing players in the space, would give potential customers a very good reason to try out a new app like this.

1. Talk with others in your industry, at your company, or in similar roles to you. You'll at least get an idea of your potential range.

2. Interview and get offers. Your market rate is what the highest bidder is willing to pay.

3. Someone on HN shared this years ago and it helped me tremendously, it's better than any other blog post or book I've ever read about negotiating a job offer. Highly suggest reading it:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

"Do you let new customers drive your product roadmap, or just decide your own roadmap and stick with it? Which approach works best in order to gain more product velocity?"

Customers' needs should always drive the product roadmap. That said, it's not uncommon for customers to not know what they really need until it's already been built. This is where the Product Manager comes in to the picture. The PM needs to ensure everything added to the roadmap is of the highest priority and will solve real customer problems or have a positive impact towards the org's key objectives.

A couple tips that may be helpful for you as you navigate this situation:

1. Before any feature-specific debate, you need to be closely aligned on the overall vision and objectives with your key stakeholders, including the "business team". What are your most important objectives to hit this quarter, this year? Growth in active users? Increased transactions? Improved bottom line profitability? etc. Once this is aligned on, it becomes much easier to have these prioritization/tradeoff discussions.

2. Many "business" teams and the leaders of those teams don't understand the basics of software development. Over time, it's beneficial for the PM to help educate key non-technical leaders about the costs of constantly changing direction. Help them understand how technical teams plan and execute, and show the impact to timeline and quality when reckless decision-making gets in the way of the engineers doing their jobs effectively. I like to this of this as a "help them help you" mindset.

Agree with you on mixed feelings, this is complex in many aspects.

Compared to buying packs of Magic or Pokemon cards, where a couple cards in some sets are exponentially more desirable than any other card (and valued as such on the secondary market), loot boxes in many games aren't that different. Except there is physical/real friction/limits to buying a pack of cards as a kid- e.g. getting to the store, going to the store with a limited amount of cash, etc. Compared to a f2p game where, if access to IAP isn't restricted, there's essentially a limitless amount that can be spent on a credit card without the kid realizing the impact of doing so.

The gamer inside me hopes this could help get rid of a lot of the cookie cutter f2p games and possibly encourage more higher quality games to be developed that are bought upfront like old times.

n =/= 1

If a baseball player has 10 at bats, and gets 0 hits, he's 0/10, with n=10

If same baseball player has 500 at bats, and gets 0 hits, he's 0/500, with n=500

You can be a lot more confident that he won't get his 1st hit anytime soon from the 2nd case compared with the 1st case. Because the sample size is significantly larger, even though the # of successes is equal between the two cases.

In many cases, industry self-regulation can be a good solution to protecting customers from being wronged. PCI is a great example- there can be huge fines on merchants that don't meet strict regulations for handling customer financial transactions according to the strict standards set by PCI.

What has become extremely clear from this situation is that we are far past the point of self-regulation being the answer for protecting personal data. Facebook knowingly enabled a 3rd party to pay $1-$2 to 300k people to acquire facebook data that may have been marked private/don't share for 50 million users. Roughly $500k for 50 million people's personal data, or in other words, a penny per person. This data is connected to influencing the election of the POTUS. There needs to be significant overhaul of how personal data is protected or this will continue to happen.

Let's assume redbox buys a single bluray for $20, and there's rental demand for each movie for 1 year. If variable cost = $1/physical disc per month, then redbox profit per disc would be something like:

P = (# of rentals * $1) - $32

where $32 = the $20 disc cost + monthly var cost

If redbox rents the movie once per week, their per disc annual profit is $20

But, if redbox can now sell the virtual download code for $8 online (essentially $0 variable cost for holding digital inventory), and digital sales has little impact on physical rentals, then the equation would be:

P = (# of rentals * $1) - $32 + $8

With annual profit per disc in the 1x/wk rental case now $28, or a 40% gross margin increase. All #s are just napkin math/assumptions, but it's easy to see the benefit here for redbox.

Youtube absolutely should care. The "long tail" is one of Youtube's competitive advantages. Sure, each individual video in the "long tail" may only have a couple thousand views, but collectively as a whole the "long tail" is the reason why you instinctively check YouTube over any other site when looking for:

"how to replace xx on 1998 honda",

"2002 winter olympics highlights",

"insert 1980s tv show name theme song"

They also know the argument between you and your partner, the private secret a friend asked you to share with no one, when you're not going to be home, etc. etc.

Completely agree. Tried using meetup several times, but the experience as a free user is too limited... Can't view all event details, can't create a group, etc.

Currency "refers to money in any form when in actual use or circulation as a medium of exchange".

Definitely is money in a relatively new form, that millions of people are using to facilitate exchanges. Why wouldn't BTC be considered currency?

True, however BTC isn't that different from a credit card in terms of liquidity. Plastic is accepted at more merchants, BTC can be digitally cashed in anytime with only a short delay.

Whether for better or worse, the current trend of smartphone and social media usage implies that this is more likely than not.

The biggest mistake was the assumption that he could ship 700 copies in a couple months. It seems this was based more on what he needed to pay the bills, not in any way tied to what demand would be. This is a fundamental mistake in setting business goals, product pricing, revenue estimates, etc. He could have scoped out similar games in terms of quality, complexity, genre, etc. and based his estimate off of this, or looked at other games conversion % of wish list to paid purchases.

"but neither they nor FreedomPop can record or monitor calls as long as only FreedomPop users are participants."

If Freedompop has a couple million customers, chances are that 95+% are not calls only involving 2 Freedompop customers... So 95+% of Freedompop customers' calls are likely monitored and recorded by Sprint or AT&T. This is scary.

Missing one of my all-time favorite dead products: Google Wave

Have you sold your "automated start a startup" app as a service to others in your situation? There must be plenty of other people in the same boat as you.