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Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

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Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#221

Post by Johnny555 »

beachstartup wrote: post #216
Johnny555 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He put the policy in place when he was hired (before then it was a more loose "come to the office if/when you want to", which worked for a 20 person company, but doesn't work so well with a 50 or 100 person company), along with more regular working hours (flex hours are fine but everyone is generally expected to be in the office between 10am - 3pm to allow meetings to be scheduled)

by old and rich i mean exactly what you described -- a person who works as a manager, is middle aged, and makes a healthy six figure salary. that's "rich" to most people. the ceo in a 20M mansion certainly qualifies also.

A 6 figure salary in the Bay Area is not what most people would call "rich", in some areas you can qualify for subsidized housing with a 6 figure salary and a family of 4.

And while I may be biased by being a decade older, "mid-forties" doesn't seem old for a senior manager.

In any case, unless someone is truly wealthy, you can't say "Oh well they don't care about their job because they are rich", because they need that job, and if they are a poor manager, they'll lose that job.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#222

Post by cellularmitosis »

ratsbane wrote: post #50
yev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, simple cron job is enough.. 30 8 * * * /fire/ceo/now

I'd make it event-driven. /usr/sbin/hire --ceo starts a setTimeout(function() {`/usr/sbin/fire --ceo`}, 'INTERVAL 60 DAY') (And that is a weird bit of pseudocode, indeed.)

Ridiculous. This is obviously a job for systemd.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#223

Post by PeterisP »

rch wrote: post #38

Phone screens, for recruiters and applicants. Basically I want both sides to be faithfully represented by conversational AI, inclusive of demeanor, domain knowlege, and general aptitude.

By the time we'll have an AI that can do that well, the same AI will likely to be able to do both your and the recruiters job, so the phone screen won't be necessary.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#224

Post by blakesterz »

jasonallen wrote: post #67
blakesterz wrote: post #56

Onboarding of new customers . I feel like we must do this different than most places because I've not been even able to find a good system to even track the steps and things I do to get them set up and started. I've tried just about every task and project manager out there, most of them were good enough, but nothing was ever perfect. Using Basecamp now, has proven to be " good enough " so far (support has been perfec…

I'm confused by what you mean. I'd argue that onboarding new customers should be your core competency, the focus of your main product. What am I missing?

>> I'd argue that onboarding new customers should be your core competency, the focus of your main product.

I suppose that's true, in a way. We host open source stuff for stuff, we support people, we do lots of stuff, some of it is automated, and some of it isn't. I was just saying a larger part of getting the new customers in production would be good to have more automated and I've not yet found an easy way to do that.

I do like the idea of that being a core competency, though not quite a focus of the main product.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#225

Post by pknerd »

crystalPalace wrote: post #212
pknerd wrote: post #24

I automated entire process of applying jobs on Glassdoor by using Python and Selenium. Already sold to a few students.

This sounds interesting and potentially very useful. Would you mind sharing a link to your project or giving a more in-depth description?

you may contact me via email given in my profile

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#226

Post by [deleted] »

BjoernKW wrote: post #52
jasikpark wrote: post #35

Cleaning up and organizing data for processing.

Can you elaborate? There are plenty of data cleansing and processing tools. Things like formatting errors can easily be fixed automatically. Things like "Human erroneously put a string in a date field in Excel and exported it to CSV."? Not so much. Errors like that often require bespoke solutions.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#227

Post by superuser2 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #211
beamatronic wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you meant to say $500k is a decent down payment on a house, yes?

I'm sorry, yes. $500k for a decent small condo, but that'll be a down-payment on a decent house .

Where are you seeing these?

Basic 2-bedroom condos in the general vicinity of an East Bay BART stop seem to run $700-900k; SF proper with any hope of a short walk or bike ride to downtown, $1.3 - $2 million. There are $500k houses, but they're in Richmond.

I think to be $500k, a condo would have to be far from transit in the East Bay, but such places are mostly single family homes.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#228

Post by DougN7 »

I wish a customer could go to our online order form and press "Price Quote" instead of "Order" and get a price quote (PDF) that they could give to their purchasing department. It would only take a few hours to pound out, but there is always higher priority work.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#229

Post by blisse »

Johnny555 wrote: post #18

I'd get rid of the manual process of driving to the office every day and replace it with collaboration tools to let people telecommute full time. We actually use such tools, but have a "no remote workers" policy. Occasional work from home is fine, just not full time.

If Microsoft or any similar company manages to master holoportation it will be an absolute game changer.

Re: Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company?

#230

Post by superuser2 »

geofft wrote: post #218
pyrophane wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've noticed in this thread and in other HN comments is a change in the way people talk about remote work. What used to be considered a perk seems to have turned into a right, and even a class issue (the corporate masters oppressing the workers). Personally, I don't really buy it. There are trade-offs with remote workers. They are harder to collaborate with, and they generally require more process to manage…

> We make six-figure salaries, have our health care paid for, and, because we are in demand at them moment, are frequently pampered by our employers. But (as 'eli_gottlieb pointed out) the only people who can do that are those who can afford to relocate to San Francisco or perhaps a few other places, and the initial cost of that is increasing commensurate with demand. We have, in the tech industry, found a very good…

>If we figure out how to increase supply to keep up with what looks like unquenchable and long-term demand

The answer, as it always has been, is sprawl. We can't sprawl with cars anymore: land is too valuable to park on. So we're bidding with our time: moving to further-out transit stops, walking farther to the stations, tolerating increasing crowding on the trains (losing the ability to work and read). People who nominally make $50+/hour are spending 2, 3 hours a day commuting from their $2500/mo apartments.

I don't mind being a passthrough for the transfer of wealth between tech investors and real estate investors. I am growing increasingly resentful about the hours of my life that I'll never get back, shuttling back and forth from where housing is affordable.

I could technically live close to work, but not with an emergency fund. Maybe with roommates, but that's even worse.

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