Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#41

Post by titanomachy » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

dwrodri wrote: post #14

There is a non-trivial amount of work being done at university research labs that has yet to feel the effects of the machine learning revolution because PIs aren’t investing (or cannot afford) programmers, and scientific equipment is manufactured by a small handful of companies who have little incentive to innovate. Please note that n=2, but both myself and a friend of met have met people working in life science labs…

I learned programming in order to do my job more effectively while I was employed as a research assistant in a university neuroscience lab. At some point I realized that programmers in industry get paid 10x more (not an exaggeration, literally 10x) so I left after a couple years.

I enjoyed my time there a lot, I was building tools to help very smart and motivated people solve cool science problems. My users sat across the lab bench from me (the original open office plan?) and iteration/feedback cycles were super fast. People were appreciative and I could see how much time I was saving them. It was very motivating. Some of the more useful stuff I built got picked up by other labs in the group.

Maybe I'll do that kind of thing again someday, if I decide I've had my fill of megacorp programming.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#42

Post by jatgoodwin » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #13

I've started looking at software to help with residential construction tasks, i.e. the construction of a single-family house. My impression so far is that there's so much variability in what they encounter, that most tasks are best handled ad hoc by experienced tradesmen. But I'm not certain; it's possible that that's just the status quo, not how it needs to be.

I currently work with a lot of residential construction and repair.

I feel like truss factories could use some help with quality control with machine vision probably. A problem is trusses are built by alcoholic meth heads making minimum wage rather than carpenters on site to save time and money, but then the truss factory has to send out an engineer to fix it on site, usually missing or wrong gang nails or its just out of alignment.

Temp laborers could probably use some software to help with tracking hours etc. Typically all the hours are tracked with just the supervisor writing down on a carbon copy how long they worked and gives it to the laborers to take back to their office which is then manually input to the billing system to pay the laborers at the end of the day.

Keep in mind there's a much larger population of non-smartphone users that only use flipphones in construction especially day labor so any sort of app meant for the workers or laborers to use would just go unused.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#43

Post by rawoke083600 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

Also keep in mind sometimes... the "undeserved industries" are "undeserved" for a reason... like politics, culture, and or refusal to change etc..

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#44

Post by karmelapple » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

dwrodri wrote: post #14

There is a non-trivial amount of work being done at university research labs that has yet to feel the effects of the machine learning revolution because PIs aren’t investing (or cannot afford) programmers, and scientific equipment is manufactured by a small handful of companies who have little incentive to innovate. Please note that n=2, but both myself and a friend of met have met people working in life science labs…

Agreed. But also agreed there’s little room for paying for software in this world, either. From my anecdotal observations, grad students or postdocs learn just the bit of code they need to accomplish a few things, then either never sharing the code online or never attempting to maintain it (because they never would have learned that anyway, nor do they have the time or motivation). And there’s no significant funding to change this.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#45

Post by jsutton » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

lazyeye wrote: post #35

rcarmo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. So MUCH this. Legal-related software is mostly souped-up search engines, there is so much to be done here. Many legal professionals are barely computer-literate, of course (and that is a big issue) but many are increasingly savvy and feel constrained by various proprietary solutions. (Edit: typo and further commentary)

Is it because lawyers charge for their time and have zero incentive to be more efficient

There is always an incentive for saving time. For example, lawyers can use that time to take on more clients or simply be more thorough.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#46

Post by jtolmar » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #27

dpix wrote: post #21

Government. Often plagued by bad or outdated software rather than the lack of it

That's true, but it's too hard to sell to the government for a small startup. The RFP process is so long and brutal, and most of the time you need to have a man on the inside and basically go through that process as a formality because you are already guaranteed the contract.

What about the RFP process itself then? Can a company make it easier for startups to sell to the government?

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#47

Post by mynegation » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #41

dwrodri wrote: post #14

There is a non-trivial amount of work being done at university research labs that has yet to feel the effects of the machine learning revolution because PIs aren’t investing (or cannot afford) programmers, and scientific equipment is manufactured by a small handful of companies who have little incentive to innovate. Please note that n=2, but both myself and a friend of met have met people working in life science labs…

I learned programming in order to do my job more effectively while I was employed as a research assistant in a university neuroscience lab. At some point I realized that programmers in industry get paid 10x more (not an exaggeration, literally 10x) so I left after a couple years. I enjoyed my time there a lot, I was building tools to help very smart and motivated people solve cool science problems. My users sat acros…

Out of curiosity - what are the typical tools that you built? I am in industry but sometimes have a crisis of meaning. I would not be able to sit next to researches but was wondering if there is a gap in open source tools that I (or someone else) could help to cover.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#48

Post by netsharc » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #13

I've started looking at software to help with residential construction tasks, i.e. the construction of a single-family house. My impression so far is that there's so much variability in what they encounter, that most tasks are best handled ad hoc by experienced tradesmen. But I'm not certain; it's possible that that's just the status quo, not how it needs to be.

I wonder if there's a "JIRA" for house-building. One could have predefined tasks or even modules ("garage", "pool", "foundation laying", etc.) for each new house, and tracking issues and final checks would be a bit easier/more organized.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#49

Post by edw519 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #40

edw519 wrote: post #32

I think a better question for 2 experienced guys like you is, "What industries are overserved by software?" That would open up a whole bunch of possibilities that no one is looking at. Much better than competing with 2000 others at the next soon-to-be-obsolete app. I've built a great career by asking customers to consider the "low tech solution" first, then building upon it. Amazing how often they love it so much tha…

https://xkcd.com/927/ Couldn’t help myself, the number is even the same! What do you think a solution to this problem (too complex, too many things to monitor) would look like? And all-in-one like Basecamp? Or maybe a super system that puts stuff in one place?

Start over. Remove everything and add back only what's actually needed.

It's easier than most people think.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#50

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #23

At the risk of sounding less than helpful or pessimistic, the first thing that jumped out at me when reading your post is that you are going about this backwards. I'm not saying you can't or wont' succeed. I have no idea. But it seems like the first thing that happened is that you decided you wanted to start a business. Usually it's the reverse - you get inspired by discovering a problem and realize you have the skil…

I'd argue that people who aren't married to the shape of their venture have some of their own advantages compared to those who base their business model on a preformed thesis. Namely, they are more ready to go where the money turns out to be, even if the direction is less glamorous than the original idea.