[HN Gopher] Giving a shit as a service
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Giving a shit as a service
Author : pimterry
Score : 368 points
Date : 2022-07-12 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (allenpike.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (allenpike.com)
| corrral wrote:
| Tangential, but IMO the super-power rich people have at achieving
| personal goals (this principle also applies to business goals,
| but let's set that aside) is largely due to being able to pay (to
| them) pocket change to make others do their giving-a-shit for
| them.
|
| How many shits do you have to give to stay fit as a poor person?
| Lots. Many shits must be given. You must be a shit-giving
| machine. 100% of shits given toward your goal must come from you.
|
| How many shits do you have to give to stay fit as a rich person?
| Let's see... you're paying an amount of money that's meaningless
| to you to have someone else give a shit about your meals, both
| making sure that your diet is healthy and balanced _and_ that it
| 's tasty and appealing to minimize the shit-giving you need to
| stick with it... and someone else give a shit about your work-
| outs... and someone else to give a shit about your schedule to
| make sure that stuff fits in... gee, look at that, you hardly
| have to give any shits at all, personally!
| nicbou wrote:
| I feel you. There's so much shit-giving when you're poor. You
| can't afford to outsource maintenance. You must figure it all
| out yourself: car maintenance, appliance repair, taxes etc.
| There's always something you've gotta figure out. With a bit of
| money, you make a phone call and someone else is liable for any
| trouble that might arise.
| corrral wrote:
| That's part of why I think the benefits of the US moving to
| some kind of single-payer or similar healthcare system would
| be much larger than they look based on a naive cost
| calculation--our healthcare system consumes a _ton_ of
| largely uncompensated giving-a-shit from a very large
| proportion of our society (basically everyone who 's not
| _very_ rich). I have to think that 's harming other
| activities (including health itself, since, as covered,
| eating well and exercising requires a pretty large amount of
| giving-a-shit) some of which might provide direct benefits to
| measures like GDP, if some of that time and giving-a-shit
| were recovered for other purposes.
| duxup wrote:
| I remember my first "real" job was at a company in a niche market
| who had a couple competitors.
|
| We were told often by sales and the executives that they were
| often told that despite our product being more expensive they
| bought our equipment because:
|
| "When we call your tech support guys you answer, and your support
| team seems to actually care about fixing the problem in a way
| that it doesn't happen again."
|
| That tech support team would stay together as a team through a
| couple acquisitions (and being acquired) for nearly 20 years (of
| my time at least) supporting new products and so on, until
| finally as always happens with tech support they were eventually
| devalued by the company enough that one final sale of the company
| happened and everyone was laid off.
|
| Years later I met up with some of the product engineers (who
| survived the last acquisition) told me "We still talk about how
| that team did it the right way. The team we have now is three
| times as big and handles fewer tickets and is horrible at their
| job."
|
| I always thought that team should have been sold as a group to
| someone who cared but really nobody values good tech support
| teams ... not for long.
|
| Now I work at a small software shop where we just keep picking up
| customers based on word of mouth ... because someone told them
| "these guys can deliver and care".
| aliqot wrote:
| This is great, I look for companies like these locally. When
| covid started, a lot of people in my community were out of
| work, or experiencing a drop in customer patronage. I decided
| to help these businesses best, I should make a contract with
| myself to always look for someone in my friend group who
| produces or services something first, then the wider local
| community, then the state, and so on. Much to my surprise I've
| only had to go to Amazon once, for an obscure component that
| isn't known to be produced in my locality.
|
| Through this, I've ended up with a lot of ancillary benefits
| and connections. The interaction is so much more pleasant this
| way, I don't think I'll go back. They're delivering a
| consisting product or service, and I'm predictable as a
| customer as a result. Here's an example: when I walk into the
| meat shop, they know I'm going to be there, so when something
| unique or special comes in, they have something set aside that
| they knew I'd want. They always have a recipe too or something
| they made to share. To me, that's service.
|
| You don't have to be my best man or fishing buddy, you just
| have to acknowledge the reciprocal relationship we have.
| [deleted]
| btbuildem wrote:
| Giving a shit doesn't scale. In a society obsessed with growth,
| it's not a sustainable thing.
|
| Draw what conclusions you will. I would gladly give up this
| incessant "growth" for quality.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Check out the chik-fil-a franchise model.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Society is not obsessed with growth. The top x% of the wealthy
| are.
| Juliate wrote:
| It's not the top % of the wealthy. They're fine and
| structurally fine, unless they screw it up.
|
| It's both 1) a fraction of some of those a few order of
| magnitude lower who WANT to get to the top, and 2) those who
| believe only growth can sustain the "world" system (and they
| are not necessarily wrong, only it's become critical to
| redefine growth in a radical different way, or we'll all
| burn).
| amichal wrote:
| I thought we were supposed to to be doing things that don't
| scale[1].
|
| I know that is why I like doing what it do.
|
| [1] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
| MattGaiser wrote:
| As a user you might. Would you as an investor/entrepreneur?
| Twisell wrote:
| A company you might have heard of literally survived and scaled
| thank to the process of giving a shit impulsed by a CEO they
| re-hired while the company was on the brink of bankruptcy.
|
| It was Apple.
|
| Giving a shit does scale and it's precisely when apple stop
| giving shit (keyboard, pro) that they enter the danger zone for
| theirs reputation.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, until the very moment our economic growth doesn't outpace
| population growth. Perhaps our demands are the source of the
| pressure?
| mooreds wrote:
| I've often thought one of the reasons I'm drawn to software is
| it feels like there is, at the same time:
|
| * great pay (relative to other jobs)
|
| * good working conditions (sitting at a desk)
|
| * low barrier to entry (no credentialing)
|
| * the ability to be a craftsman (or craftsperson, I suppose)
|
| I'm trying to think of other jobs that allow you to hone your
| craft in modern industrial society while fulfilling the other
| criteria and can't think of any.
| [deleted]
| datavirtue wrote:
| Sitting at a desk is not a good thing. At all. If you're you
| are under 40 I urge you to get away from the desk ASAP.
| mooreds wrote:
| Personally, I like to stand at my desk.
|
| But as far as comfort, I've done manual labor (farm work,
| trail work) in the past.
|
| I would choose sitting at a desk in AC with bodily autonomy
| (to go to the restroom or take a walk when I want) over
| such manual labor. All. Day. Long. :)
|
| But you're correct, humans should move.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Giving a shit doesn 't scale. In a society obsessed with
| growth, it's not a sustainable thing._
|
| GaS comes in many forms, and can scale without issue for forms
| that fall within (for example) product design and development
| processes. I think we can agree that some companies do this
| better than others. Improved shit-giving at this stage actually
| gets cheaper per customer with scale.
|
| Per-unit/per-customer forms of GAS can scale as well, but not
| for free. For example, Google and YouTube _could_ vastly
| improve customer /creator support, but explicitly chooses not
| to because they believe there's no GaS ROI there.
| jlynn wrote:
| The phrase "giving a shit doesn't scale" makes as much sense to
| me as "honesty doesn't scale." It's not a question of scaling
| it out, its just a question of how you operate. Do you care?
| Are you honest? Do you have integrity? You should be able to do
| these things at any scale.
| awillen wrote:
| That's not necessarily true - you can be honest and not give
| a shit.
|
| Take OP's example of buying a table - the company they worked
| with really spent a lot of time understanding their needs and
| making something custom for them. An alternative would be to
| go to IKEA and buy a table. IKEA does not give a shit in the
| same way and will not spend a great deal of time learning
| about you and what you're going to use your table for to
| ensure you get something perfect.
|
| There's absolutely nothing dishonest about that. It's not
| even to say that they don't care about the quality of their
| products. It just means they're not going to go the extra
| mile. Of course, it also means you're going to get a table
| for probably an order of magnitude less money. That's a
| perfectly reasonable tradeoff, and it's a good thing both
| types of businesses exist.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| While it's important to give a shit when dealing with customers,
| I wonder how useful "giving a shit" is when it comes to things
| like picking a conference table.
|
| Was that really the best use of this CEOs time? Is the company
| that much better off because of their fancy table?
|
| This adventure seems incredibly decadent and pointless to me.
| It's just a fucking table, focus on what matters.
| dhagz wrote:
| That was the whole point of the article - the process of
| <dealing with thing> was delightful because <thing needer>
| dealt with a <thing provider> that gave a shit.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Yeah I know but in this case whether or not <dealing with
| thing> is delightful is undermined by the consideration that
| giving a shit about <thing> in the first place seems
| counterproductive for <thing needer>.
|
| Clearly there needs to be shit giving limits for both
| counterparties regardless of <thing>.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I'm trying to understand your post. It seems like you're
| suggesting that picking out a table isn't that important, but
| my understanding of the post was that the person selling the
| table should give a shit, not the person buying the table. In
| which case I think it depends on if you're selling a commodity
| or a luxury. If you're selling a commodity focusing on one
| individual sale may not matter that much, you need to scale. If
| you're selling a luxury, it may very well be in the CEO's best
| interest to help sell an $8000 table to a company that is in
| the habit of buying $8000 tables.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> So, I suppose the moral of the story is: find yourself work
| you can give a shit about. And work with people who give a shit.
| It'll make shit a lot more pleasant - I guarantee it._
|
| I'm doing this now. No one believes that it's worth paying for,
| which is a bit sad, but I'm OK with that.
| mikkergp wrote:
| It makes me think about the research[1] that suggests people pick
| their doctors based on empathy over competence, but it's really
| hard to evaluate competence if you don't think the person is
| listening to you. Maybe you can see by some objective measure if
| they rate highly, but if the communication is bad, how can you be
| sure if what you are buying is what they are selling, even if
| what they're selling is the best ev4r.
|
| [1]
| https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_empathic_d...
| infp_arborist wrote:
| Yes, professional competence and empathy can be trained.
|
| But what enables honesty, integrity, authenticity?
| 10x-dev wrote:
| This is my biggest issue with working at FAANG (been at 2). Lots
| of people just don't give a shit. To paraphrase the Silicon
| Valley show: "you got your RSUs now fuck off for 4 years". I
| can't fault people for making the best financial decision for
| them, but for crying out loud, give a shit about the code. Write
| the unit test. Write the docs to explain the architecture.
| Refactor the code while you're editing that file. Think about
| class and method names. Give a shit.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I've been working with startups for awhile and I never got the
| chance to give a shit. Not even when I was CTO. So many
| external pressures, deadlines, hacky releases to demo to
| whatever investors. Responding to A | B testing. Firefighting.
| And the list can go on.
|
| The only time in my life I had the possibility to give a shit
| was when I was working for shit money contracting for the
| government. I've never been in that situation again where I
| could spend as much time as I needed until I delivered to the
| quality I desired. Architecture diagrams, properly planned
| executions, testing etc etc. Much slower moving than startups
| but I trust the systems I wrote to continue saving lifes as
| they have done until now. Most of the code I delivered for
| startups, I don't even trust at release, what can I say about
| decades down the line...
| amzn-throw wrote:
| For what it's worth, working at Amazon for a bunch of years
| now, this is the highest percentage of people that truly Give A
| Shit, I've ever encountered.
|
| I know it's not universal but in the parts I've worked in, it's
| intoxicating.
| josefresco wrote:
| Sometimes "giving a shit" can talk you right out of a job.
|
| You: I'd love to work with you but I need to know X,Y,Z and we
| need a couple more meetings. I want to fully understand your
| project and your goals before committing to price.
|
| Someone else: I can do it for $
|
| Some people pick (thoughtful & detailed) you, and some will pick
| (easy and vague) someone else - it really depends on their
| personality.
|
| Some business owners simply want to write a check. Others want to
| be intimately involved - the skill is determining which is
| sitting in front of you.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| People are arguing that GaS doesn't scale, but for larger
| companies, you have to GaS. Take Amazon's easy and quick return
| policy. They GaS for this interaction, making it a huge reason
| why you'd want to buy from Amazon. On the other hand, take
| Google's different services. Because they didn't GaS about the
| longevity of their services, they now have a graveyard of
| different services they killed and a lot of people who won't
| invest in the Google ecosystem because of it. Other examples of
| not GaS: Shopify support, Google support, Amazon and warehouse
| workers.
|
| TLDR: You have to GaS as you scale because otherwise people will
| start discounting you or your product as not trustworthy or worth
| the frustration.
| yboris wrote:
| Reminds me of _Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value
| of Work_ - where the author repairs broken motorcycles, and
| sometimes ends up spending more time than expected (without
| charging extra to the client) because he cared. A lovely book
| that is worth a read.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp...
| openfuture wrote:
| I am doing the somewhat opposite, I am starting a company where I
| will take shit as a service (and compost it).
| prepend wrote:
| I now think all conference room tables should be superellipses.
| It's much more usable space.
| s1k3s wrote:
| Nice anecdote. Never applies in practice, but it's good to dream
| about it.
| t_mann wrote:
| Just wondering - I guess "giving shit" should be sufficiently
| well defined that we could create a training set for a GPT-3-like
| pre-trained language model.
| giarc wrote:
| When selling my last house, I invited 3-4 local realtors for
| appointments. 3 showed up with some printed comps and gave me a
| general idea of list price right then. The last showed up, walked
| through the house, asked about upgrades I had made etc etc then
| said "Let's meet again in a few days when I've had a chance to
| accurately price your place." He got the sale.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| And now I see several "app" companies are trying to push
| realtors out of their business entirely by using "algorithms"
| for private equity to buy up any and all housing. And I guaran-
| damn-tee they don't give a shit.
| astrange wrote:
| Good, realtors are awful.
|
| Those companies have already failed though (Zillow is
| practically about to go out of business because they failed
| so hard), probably can never succeed because of the adverse
| selection effect, and "investors are buying all the housing"
| is a myth propagated by NIMBYs.
| hahaitsfunny wrote:
| teucris wrote:
| You pay premium to get the GaS package. Most people think that's
| because you're paying them to care, but that's not it at all. You
| cannot pay someone to care.
|
| You're paying for the rare access to people who get genuine
| satisfaction of doing something well. The fact that it is a
| precious commodity saddens me. I think a lack of decent financial
| security keeps people from G'ing an S.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Also, people caring that you give a shit also requires
| competence.
|
| If you try and fail, you won't be recognized.
| bob1029 wrote:
| So far the consensus seems to be that GaSaaS doesn't scale.
|
| I would like to protest this sentiment.
|
| With technology, you can empower non-wizards to give
| substantially more of a shit than they otherwise would be able
| to.
|
| The danger lies in the specific nature of those technological
| implementations and the engagement models applied to their usage.
| Today, our models look something like "fuck your dopamine loop as
| hard and fast as possible without any subsequent regard for
| anything at all"
| dmje wrote:
| Why I work with museums. I'll never be rich but they're full of
| amazing people who truly give a shit about what they do. The
| WankerCoefficient is very low - 12 years in and the number of
| tosser clients I've had to deal with can be counted on one hand.
|
| As a consequence of this, we deliver good work - highly focused
| on client needs, bespoke, and at high quality. We've got a name
| for it and have never done anything apart from rely on word of
| mouth for new work.
|
| It's good work and I love it :-)
| [deleted]
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| This concept is also relevant when applying for a job. At one of
| my previous jobs, I asked my boss what about the interview
| convinced him to give me an offer. He said it was because I asked
| so many questions, and he hardly had a chance to ask any that
| he'd prepared.
| msencenb wrote:
| Everyone saying it doesn't scale is missing the point.
|
| Scaling is a winner-take-all, venture capital mindset. The
| article is about service businesses, which do not need to hit web
| scale! We are talking about services here not your web startup.
|
| Even beyond services, giving a shit and building saas is not
| impossible. In fact, I wish more tech companies started small and
| stayed small. I absolutely want to run a digital small business
| and I want to give a shit, it makes the building feel purposeful
| instead of this product-led growth at all costs bullshit.
|
| I hope we see a software middle class grow in the next decade.
| Middle class tech companies are going to be coming from the
| bootstrapper + founder focused funds (TinySeed / Calm) and they
| are going to have a distinct advantage if they understand their
| strategy/context in their chosen verticals.
| dsaavy wrote:
| There are a lot of people who already do this. Take a look at
| the MicroConf community started by Rob Walling. The middle
| class is growing in software, you just won't read about it
| (usually) on most of the social media platforms or news outlets
| because it's usually not a flashy story.
| rwalling wrote:
| Absolutely. We (MicroConf/TinySeed) ran some numbers to try
| to quantify press coverage of "boring" software companies,
| which confirms dsaavy's comment:
| https://tinyseed.com/latest/measuring-the-depth-of-the-
| softw...
| [deleted]
| cwkoss wrote:
| not giving a shit doesn't scale well either. see: our currently
| corporatist hellscape of a country which allows companies to
| defraud customers en masse and only receive a slap on a wrist
| fine in the unlikely case they are punished at all.
| mooreds wrote:
| > The article is about service businesses, which do not need to
| hit web scale!
|
| There are many small consultancies that are humming along,
| making high six figures to low seven figures a year in income,
| with good paying jobs and work/life balance. It can be a bit of
| a grind for the owners (who assume a lot of risk and have to
| land clients) and there are some ups and downs due to the
| realities of consulting (okay, just lost a big client, time to
| tighten the belt), but I've seen this work a number of times.
| Having a recurring source of income (productized service,
| hosting) can really help.
|
| The main thing these companies do is "be excellent", aka give a
| shit.
| [deleted]
| civilized wrote:
| Providing a service that's actually a service... as a service.
| c0l0 wrote:
| This - the people involved actually giving a shit - is exactly
| why FOSS projects' volunteer support (on IRC, for example)
| regularly trumps the crud experience you get from huge,
| established, and deep-pocketed vendors of alternative products
| that are astonishingly expensive. Ironically, often the most
| extreme in the "support" contract department.
| fleddr wrote:
| Giving a shit has many personal benefits that go beyond the
| question of financial sustainability.
|
| Career-wise, if you give a shit about your work and your
| colleagues this does add up to a reputation. When you do things
| "right", don't gossip or backstab, act with integrity and
| honesty, people notice. You'll be seen as trustworthy, a pillar
| to fall back on.
|
| The thing is though, the person screwing everybody over and job
| hopping before the damage becomes visible may actually get more
| out of their career, financially. It's a rather philosophical
| question as to which character type you want to be.
|
| Another reward of giving a shit is the gratitude people show,
| because it has become a rare behavior it seems.
|
| For example, I'm running a web community (photography), non-
| profit, as a hobby. One particular user, an old Australian guy,
| is very much not tech savvy and recently I spent two nights in a
| row to get him onboarded again. He struggles with the simplest
| things but it's all good now.
|
| To a calculating mind, this is a ridiculous investment of scarce
| free time with virtually no gain. The last part is where that
| mind couldn't be more wrong.
|
| The man was almost in tears from gratitude. He's alone, struggles
| and nobody bothers to explain him anything, not even his family,
| most of which live far away. He got helped, by somebody he never
| met, for no particular reason but giving a shit.
|
| I will remember that gratitude a decade from now. By comparison,
| a stranger could now send me 10K and it would mean absolutely
| nothing to me. I don't need it, I have my stuff. You can't buy
| deep and memorable human connections and moments, they are by
| definition a result of giving a shit.
|
| Look at how little it takes and how giant the impact is. A
| company put genuine effort into a customer's table needs, and
| here we are.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| My newest startup idea is to devise a continuous series of tests
| meant to gauge how much of a shit interview candidates _and_
| companies give a shit.
|
| It is like leetcode meets tinder meets GaSaaS.
| _tom_ wrote:
| The problem with testing, is the people who optimize for
| testing _guaranteed_ do not give a shit about the actual work.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Ah, but you see, giving a shit doesn't scale. It's certainly not
| web-scale, anyway.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Some fancy words, for where "shitgiving" doesn't quite fit:
|
| Meta-cognition. Mentalisation. Intersubjectivity.
|
| When a sentient being picks up the (apparent) communications of
| another being, instead of taking these 'noises' on face value as
| signals requiring action/process, they perceive _another_.
| Another being, like them, with thoughts and feelings, that they
| "hold in mind". These are first steps towards empathy/sympathy.
|
| The distancing function of technology is very efficient at
| suppressing this. What we do in a purely protocol/process based
| world made only of responses, targets, KPIs is forget meta-
| cognition. It's not that people are being "evil" [1] but that
| quality frameworks based only on measuring things don't
| accommodate it.
|
| [1] Cold Evil: Technology and Modern Ethics - Andrew Kimbrell
| infp_arborist wrote:
| That's a fascinating article (from 02000!) you have shared.
| Well worth a separate HN submission.
| drdunce wrote:
| I wish there was a job board that showed only jobs worthy of
| giving a shit
| teucris wrote:
| https://www.idealist.org?
| gumby wrote:
| We don't put our values on our web site but we do talk about them
| internally a lot and I have them listed on a small piece of paper
| glued to my laptop next to the trackpad. #1 is "Integrity". You
| cannot convince anyone you have integrity by telling them
| anything, they can only come to believe it by seeing how you act
| _over time_.
|
| And if we don't have integrity what does it matter what the other
| values are?
| jfengel wrote:
| Are you saying I can outsource my shit-giving activities?
|
| Sign me up. I've been unable to give a shit for quite some time.
| I wish I could give a shit, but the world has become a pretty
| ugly place, in large part because of deliberate attempts to
| demoralize those who give a shit.
|
| You see it all over the place on social media. People do a weak-
| ass form of shit-giving in the form of "raising awareness", the
| least conceivable level of effort for something you wish you
| could give a shit about, but don't actually give a shit.
|
| Of course even if somebody tried to GaSaaS, the space would
| promptly fill with people giving as few shits as possible for as
| much money as possible. Too many major charities do that: they'll
| take your money and spend it mostly on advertising for other
| people to give their money, too, and very little on the things
| you'd expect if they actually gave a shit.
|
| I know TFA is more about the business sense of giving a shit, but
| I'd love to see somebody able to give a shit in a larger sense.
| Unfortunately, I can't give a shit because it seems nobody gives
| a shit any more -- except the people who are passionately devoted
| to making sure other people feel miserable instead.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Our culture is in love with bullshitting. If you can bullshit
| to get what you want (ostensibly), then you're the man. Notice
| how getting away with things is glorified. It's like you
| managed to hack the Matrix or steal the cookie from the cookie
| jar your mommy didn't want you to touch. It's the childish
| satisfaction that you're hot shit because you got past the
| grown ups.
|
| Of course, you can get away with a lot of bad things. The
| question is: should you do such things? The answer is: no. No
| one of any sense of dignity will lie, cheat, steal, or
| bullshit. No one who know how harmful it is _to themselves_ to
| do such things will do them. It is beneath them and their love
| themselves too much to want to harm themselves. It 's
| degrading. Wine won through illicit means tastes like urine
| anyway, if it tastes like anything at all. It's like the devil
| has offered you a glass of Chateau Lafite under the condition
| that you hand him your taste buds, or that you let him take a
| dump in it first.
|
| Give a shit about things worth giving a shit to the degree that
| they are worthy of being given a shit about. Don't worry about
| approval from others. Virtue is its own reward. Don't whine.
| Don't be envious.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| IMNTBHO, it started with Google. They pioneered the idea of
| embedding themselves DEEPLY into our lives (email!), while
| absolutely not giving any shits about it at all. There NEVER
| was a number to call if something went wrong. Can't get your
| POP or IMAP settings right? Fuck you! You lost your password?
| Fuck you! Someone stole your account? Fuck you! There's no
| recourse for any problem unless you're important enough to
| raise a stink about it on a social media platform. Then
| EVERYONE saw that their businesses were no longer constrained
| by having to give a shit any more, and it's just been all
| downhill ever since.
| drekipus wrote:
| I think Microsoft with their entire OS, but yes you're right
| megraf wrote:
| It's a real great message, yes, they gave a shit. They gave a
| shit because the author likely paid >10,000 CAD. Yes, ten
| thousand Canadian dollars. Or $7692 USD. This is significant to
| me because I feel like for a table (conference room or not!)
| anyone asking for that type of price point _should_ give a shit.
| I'm all for nice furniture (in fact, I've built some) - but I'd
| say some of the cape-wearing folks who really care are often
| doing so behind the scenes, or, if you're lucky: in a position at
| a company (or their own company) who really has pride in what
| they're doing.
|
| I think the author found a company who gives a shit, but I'd also
| like to point to other makers who give a shit without the five-
| figure price point.
|
| Here's a small list: - https://woodgears.ca (you will be making
| these items yourself! Plans are ~15 USD) - Dave Moore
| (https://www.youtube.com/user/dpmbn8) - That one support agent
| who didn't give up :)
| walrus01 wrote:
| The difference in quality and customer service of a _small_ local
| /regional ISP that truly does give a shit vs a giant nationwide-
| scale ISP can be amazing.
|
| _If_ the small ISP has a sufficient amount of network
| engineering knowledge and acumen to build small-scale things at
| very high quality.
|
| More along the lines of the custom wood business referenced in
| the original post, I am familiar with a few small welding/steel
| fabrication and custom carbon fiber CNC cutting shops in the
| metro Vancouver area that also _give a shit_.
|
| They aren't trying to scale up to some huge size or go for
| economies of scale, they are perfectly content to serve a mid
| sized local market with not cheap, high quality products.
| seanhunter wrote:
| One of the interesting aspects of giving a shit is that it will
| lead sometimes to you doing things which are not in your short-
| term selfish narrowly-defined "best interest" but because you
| give a shit you'll do it anyway. Some of these lead to long-term
| value that is very significant but you can't know at the time.
|
| I was once asked by a client (bank) to take a call with one of
| _their_ clients (a pretty important hedge fund). I did this as a
| courtesy even though I thought our product wasn't appropriate for
| the hedge fund. Anyhow I get on the call and it's the COO, the
| Chief Investment Officer, the CTO and a couple of other _very_
| important people at this big fund. (ie a much more senior call
| than I really expected). Anyway, because I give a shit, I told
| them our product wouldn't really be right for them and explained
| why. They thanked me and I heard nothing more of it.
|
| Until a couple of years later where I offered a job out of the
| blue because one of the people on the call had been impressed by
| how I had dealt with it, and by pure coincidence his partner was
| a recruiter who was tasked with headhunting for a CTO role and he
| said "hey you should check this guy out".
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > One of the interesting aspects of giving a shit is that it
| will lead sometimes to you doing things which are not in your
| short-term selfish narrowly-defined "best interest" but because
| you give a shit you'll do it anyway. Some of these lead to
| long-term value that is very significant but you can't know at
| the time.
|
| The feedback loop on these actions is so long that it's hard to
| understand the value of a positive reputation. It can take
| years of consistent positive actions before the long-term,
| indirect benefits of building a good reputation become
| apparent.
|
| This is a constant sticking point when I mentor young people:
| It's easy to enter the business world and assume every
| interaction with other people is purely transactional. What's
| in it for me right now? Why should I help you?
|
| It's also easy for junior people to think that changing jobs is
| a perfect reset button for their reputation or that the
| consequences of their actions will be neatly contained to the
| people around them. It can be a shock to discover just how much
| backchannel reference checking happens when evaluating
| candidates as well as how often they'll end up working with
| former coworkers again at other companies down the road.
|
| Reputations are very asymmetric: They take a long time to
| build, but they can be destroyed very quickly. It can take
| years to see the benefits of having built a positive
| reputation, but it's an incredibly powerful asset once you've
| built it.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| There's also a compounding factor. There's some relatively
| low-risk, high-reward career progression to be had by staying
| in something niche. I don't mean a JS packaging system,
| something more like A/B testing. People who stick it out
| advance, and niches are (by definition) small. So you're
| either bouncing around fields all the time (which can work)
| or the people you've worked with over the last 10 years are
| going to make up a surprising portion of the most influential
| people in your field.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >Reputation is for slaves, Honor, Courage, & Integrity is for
| the Self-Owned
|
| -Nassim Taleb
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| What does that actually mean though?
| [deleted]
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| > They take a long time to build, but they can be destroyed
| very quickly.
|
| I agree with the vast majority of what you've shared, but
| this one is a bit trickier.
|
| Reputations _can_ be destroyed quickly, but it isn 't normal
| or easy for them to be destroyed quickly. Someone can end up
| in the press for something flagrant, sure, but usually what
| happens is that the people that have seen your work first
| hand may hear of a lapse of judgement or a flub with
| technology, raise their eyebrows a bit, and think to
| themselves "that's not the person I know, but I'll keep an
| eye out for next time."
|
| A certain degree of humble appreciation for our shared
| fallibility is a marker of maturity. I've had the opportunity
| to be both gracious and the receiver of grace in situations
| like this, and I don't think the message we should be sharing
| with younger software developers is one that would inspire
| paranoia. Treat others as you would want to be treated, even
| when it hurts, and the rest will work itself out even if you
| mess up here or there is a better orientation to adopt in my
| opinion.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| You were lucky in this instance, but is optimising for this
| lottery the best use of time and effort?
| bsuvc wrote:
| People who don't "optimize for this lottery" are the ones who
| luck always seems to pass them by. They just don't know why,
| and they guess they're just unlucky. It's just not fair!
|
| What they don't see is how the "lucky" people put extra
| effort in over an extended period of time, without immediate
| personal gain. It's not worth it... Until it is.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| I don't optimise for this lottery and I know exactly why my
| career is the way it is. I just don't care.
| ssully wrote:
| I wouldn't call it winning the lottery; it's just that people
| remember people they admire for whatever reason. I am early
| in my career, but I definitely have a short list of people
| I've worked with that I admire for a number of reasons
| (integrity, empathy, getting shit done, etc). I have pushed
| to work with them for those reasons, and I feel like I've
| gotten work people admiring me for whatever reason.
| bena wrote:
| It's honestly up there. Success is a combination of luck and
| effort; where opportunity meets preparation. You can control
| preparation. You can't control opportunity, you can only put
| yourself in places where opportunity hangs out.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Yes, _absolutely_. This is one of the factors that
| contributes to people having a general aura of getting
| repeatedly lucky.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > but is optimising for this lottery the best use of time and
| effort?
|
| The difference is that you're not optimizing for a single
| lottery. If you build a habit of caring about things and
| doing a good job, people will notice. You'll meet thousands
| or tens of thousands of people across your career. The more
| of those people who walk away with a positive idea of your
| reputation, the more "lotteries" you've entered. The more
| positive your reputation, the more entries you get.
|
| This really shows up in the second decade of a career, when
| many of the people you've worked with in the past have moved
| up into management positions and are looking for good
| candidates to recruit. Having established a reputation as a
| person who cares and who does the right thing will fast-track
| you through interview processes and move you to the top of
| recruiting lists (and rightly so, because you've already
| proven yourself).
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| If this was the only time in their life they'd be implicitly
| taking this gamble, sure, that's a reasonable question. But
| if you behave "impressively" in a consistent fashion, things
| like this are more likely to happen.
| _tom_ wrote:
| Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery
| odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery
| odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times.
|
| I have never been one to deliberately "build my network"
| and even I have had several beneficial things come about
| via my network.
| ghaff wrote:
| I find a lot of people conflate building and maintaining
| relationships with people with going to "networking"
| events and other artificial faux network building.
|
| I've also never thought of myself as deliberately
| building a network but the (few) jobs I've landed over
| the past 25 years have been directly through people I
| knew.
| vsareto wrote:
| Calling these lotteries is actually a big misrepresentation.
| Lotteries are for astronomical odds. Plus you can do things
| to change your odds.
|
| Instead of waiting to be picked, you could have been
| proactive and reached out to them for a job. The odds
| massively improve in your favor compared to a lottery in
| terms of winning (winning = getting a job in this case). And
| to belabor the obvious, no matter how cool I am with the gas
| station clerk, it's not going to improve my odds of winning
| the lottery.
|
| That leads us to part 2, which is "why do anything at all for
| your career when you already have skills" and it's because
| doing things like signalling that you give a shit alerts
| other folks with decision-making powers that can benefit you.
| munificent wrote:
| Is an optimizing your life around best use of time and effort
| the meta-optimal path for a satisfying life?
|
| One argument is that the parts of our life that make it _our_
| particular life are the things that are, by design not
| optimal. Any optimal choice we make is an optimal choice any
| rational actor in our shoes would make, so says nothing about
| us or our particular place in the universe.
|
| You are what you're willing to squandor time and attention
| on.
| mooreds wrote:
| He didn't invest much time, just the time on the call and the
| time to determine it wasn't a fit. So I wouldn't call it
| optimizing for lottery. Instead, I'd call it optimizing for
| reputation. And you can't know what doors your reputation
| will open for you. You just can't.
|
| What's the alternative? If he'd fibbed and tried to make it
| work, and then wasted everyone's time during the sales
| process. Or worse had an unhappy team at the end of the POC
| or a contract that the company wouldn't renew?
|
| I guess he could have not taken the call, but I think if a
| client asks you to do that and it isn't invasive in terms of
| effort, most consulting folks would do it.
| jerf wrote:
| There's other low-but-non-zero probability outcomes with a
| high payoff out of such a call, too. For instance, it may
| turn out that you _are_ a good fit, because the
| requirements got mangled during the inevitable game of
| telephone. There 's enough such possibilities that it's
| worth taking the call, but also not wasting anyone's time
| once the situation has become clear.
| zo1 wrote:
| There are companies out there that prey on this kind of good
| will, unfortunately.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| And the minor superpower demonstrated here by one of the
| executives was giving a shit about people enough to remember
| this, like _really_ remember.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| From what I know, executives appreciate people being honest
| with them and not constantly trying to sell them on
| something. OP was honest and didn't try to sell them
| something they didn't need - something people in executives
| positions really appreciate and remember.
|
| Case in point:
|
| I remember working on a project that was taking a long time
| to get stuff done. One day, I took lunch in our project room
| and was there with another junior dev as we were both trying
| to finish a few things up and working and eating lunch.
|
| Suddenly in walks three older gentlemen in suits. They start
| looking at all the stuff (charts, metrics, designs, etc) we
| have posted up around the room and start talking and pointing
| to some charts. I kindly ask them if there's something I can
| help them with.
|
| They walk over and introduce themselves. Two are executive
| VP's of the department we're building the app for. The other
| is a senior VP who is showing them what we do. I start
| explaining how the progress is going, "Well, Bob, its really
| all rainbows and unicorns right now. If we can get server A
| talking to server B, it will be even better."
|
| Exec A puts his hand and I stop talking. Looks at me and
| says, "Atfateshands, tell me honestly how the project is
| going. I didn't come down here for a sales presentation, tell
| me honestly what your thoughts are."
|
| That evolved into a 30 min talk about what I thought was
| holding the project back and possibly transitioning out of
| some the tech that was kind of forced on the project to a
| better framework that would speed up building this app. I
| stood at a whiteboard and quickly ran the numbers for them
| showed them it wasn't too late to pivot.
|
| They thanked me for my time and left. I figured nothing would
| come of it. Then a few days later, the project manager comes
| to me and says, "You know how you wanted to pivot to that new
| JS Framework? You got the green light. Let's get started
| ASAP, ok?" The same three guys showed up about a month later,
| and pulled me outside the room to thank me for my honesty and
| not just telling them what they wanted to hear and believed
| that pivoting to the tech I recommended essentially saved the
| entire project from getting scrapped. Because of all the
| delays we were having, they were discussing the possibilities
| of just shutting the project down in the next few weeks when
| they visited our room that day. The most senior VP also told
| me in the future not to wait around before speaking up.
|
| It was a pretty eye opening experience, but gave me a really
| valuable lesson.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > "You know how you wanted to pivot to that new JS
| Framework? You got the green light. Let's get started ASAP,
| ok?"
|
| It sounds like the PM also wanted to pivot. But someone
| between you and the VP on the org chart didn't.
|
| Were they bitter about the situation where it seemed like
| you went over their head? Were there repercussions from
| that?
|
| I'm not saying you did anything wrong, but you make it
| sound like the decision was unambiguous - you are being
| forced to use some tech that's slowing you down, and you
| know of a way to speed things up. Why did that need a VP to
| be approved?
|
| I'm not bringing this up to blame you - but I also want to
| make sure anyone reading this doesn't feel like their only
| action in a situation like this is to wait for a VP to come
| in, hear all their complaints, and magically solve their
| problems. In another situation, your exact actions would
| have led to no change, and a ruined relationship with a
| manager who would have vindictively punished you by going
| outside the reporting chain.
| ajb wrote:
| It could also be a case of the Abilene Paradox:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
|
| "In the Abilene paradox, a group of people collectively
| decide on a course of action that is counter to the
| preferences of many or all of the individuals in the
| group. It involves a common breakdown of group
| communication in which each member mistakenly believes
| that their own preferences are counter to the group's
| and, therefore, does not raise objections, or even states
| support for an outcome they do not want. A common phrase
| relating to the Abilene paradox is a desire to not "rock
| the boat". "
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Did something other than a thank you come out of this
| interaction?
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Based on the story, it helped the project not get shut
| down.
| datavirtue wrote:
| The thing is, you take that lesson, try to speak up another
| time, and the executive flies off the handle at your boss
| about some perceived sidestepping of the hierarchy.
|
| I have caught the good and the bad from speaking up but the
| universal message is to always keep your mouth shut...and
| that's why we can't have nice things.
|
| I power through and speak up usually, but most people are
| deathly afraid to because of the spoken/unspoken "keep your
| mouth shut" cultural message born of hierarchies. Toxic,
| and probably the reason people flee corporate life ASAP.
| rlpb wrote:
| Keeping your mouth shut maintains your own status quo.
| People advance in their careers by being good at knowing
| when to keep their mouths shut, and when to speak up.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Biiiig part of the equation people don't consider when they
| ask us to "go the extra mile" repeatedly. It's ok for us to
| ask, "well...what have you done for me lately or can commit
| to now?" once in a while.
| mooreds wrote:
| I believe this is also called "playing the long game".
|
| It's a tough game to play when you are trying to hit quarterly
| numbers, but it is a fun game to play over a career.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| congratulations on working for a hedge fund
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It's refreshing to see these stories. As someone from the
| commercial film world, these stories often end in "long term
| relationships that are incredibly mutually beneficial and
| profitable for all" or "someone got something for free off me
| knowing full well they had no intention of ever talking to me
| again."
|
| It's tough knowing the difference. A lot of people baulk when I
| say I won't "go the extra mile" sometimes, but frankly I just
| have to make my own calculations and sometimes you (royal you)
| are just being greedy. If I "go the extra" mile as a video
| producer for every person who asks me, not only am I
| potentially setting steeper expectations for next time (because
| it is NEVER just once with most people and they may tell
| others), but I am also taking on more work for less pay. That's
| other work I could be doing, that's being with my kids, that's
| all sorts of valuable time for potentially nothing.
|
| I don't know. I hope this little rant has something useful in
| it haha
| skinnymuch wrote:
| It definitely does. Going the extra mile in a 5 minute way is
| not the hardest thing to do most of the time because of the
| minor consequence. The bigger the sacrifice gets, the harder
| it is to go the extra mile. It's still best to do it as much
| as possible, but within calculated reason.
| tobinharris wrote:
| I run a mobile app agency like you and we do pretty well selling
| GaSaaS.
|
| I'm a developer but have studied sales quite a lot over the last
| 10 years. The most important thing I learned is to find clients
| that fit you really well when it comes to skills, culture and
| budget.
|
| To do this you have to give a shit and not be afraid to ask
| potentially off-putting questions. Stuff like:
|
| "Are you sure you want to build this app, your business case
| doesn't add up so why bother?"
|
| "Can you demonstrate you're in this for the long haul? There's no
| joy in building an app that fails, which is what happens if you
| don't budget to iterate your app."
|
| "How come you don't hire freelancers or contractors, it will cost
| you less?"
|
| Obviously I ask nicer questions too, but these are good "give a
| shit enough to risk losing the sale" kind of questions.
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