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Users You Don’t Want

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Re: Users You Don’t Want

#151

Post by fennecfoxen »

makomk wrote: post #111
fennecfoxen wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirBnB is a rent extractor? That's a tendentious claim; the reason all the 'sharing economy' stuff works is that it's improving capital utilization and damaging cartels. I'd expect that real rent extractors are hotel owners in big cities with limited hotel zoning, who lobby for anti-AirBnB regulation to keep competition low and prices high. Or the politician/business alliances who build the local convention center by…

The reason all that "sharing economy" stuff works is that you can afford to have worse capital utilization if you ignore existing regulations. For example, there's a big difference between what people can afford to pay for hotel stays and what they can afford to pay to live somewhere which means that dedicated AirBNB apartments can stay empty a large chunk of the time if you ignore zoning regulations intended to bloc…

> there's a big difference between what people can afford to pay for hotel stays and what they can afford to pay to live somewhere

... which means that the capital associated with "people living somewhere" is poorly allocated, and would be more profitable utilized as a nice hotel space. Capital utilization isn't just about the raw duty cycle of someone using that capital. You don't markedly improve your organization's capital utilization by running SETI@Home on idle computers, because SETI@Home is a worthless waste of cycles of little or no benefit to you or society at large.

> Uber cars can operate at much lower hours and mileage

Uber's more of the damage-cartels case, admittedly.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#152

Post by joelthelion »

Just don't say no on principle because you read on HN it was cool to do so.

The same goes for saying no to feature requests. Just because it has an Applesque feel to it doesn't automatically make it right.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#153

Post by afarrell »

geofft wrote: post #110
aianus wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber has wheelchair vehicles at the same price as UberX: https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/uberwav/

It looks like UberWAV in NYC provides app-based access to the existing fleet of wheelchair-accessible taxis: Uber will find a taxi and dispatch it to where you are, and you pay taxi fare. That technically works (assuming the dispatched taxi shows up), but I'm not really sure it should count, especially because Uber's obvious goal is competing with taxis and driving them out of business.

> not really sure it should count

If the discussion is around "is a wheelchair user able to hail a car and get moved A->B?" Why shouldn't it count?

I suppose they it means that they aren't uprooting the medallion system in that corner of the economy, but that political goal shouldn't block providing access to wheelchair users. Plus, if we want WAVs to be able to operate medallionless, that can be more easily achieved through lobbying by activists who are upset about the higher costs. Uber can just funnel money to them.

> assuming the dispatched taxi shows up

I know there an issue with reliability of wheelchair repair appointments, but I'll admit myself ignorant of the current state of WAV hailing.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#154

Post by usea »

ryandrake wrote: post #16

Been through this at medium sized companies struggling to sell. This kind of customer is alluring but poisonous. Company: We sell Product X! Toxic Customer: I don't want Product X, I want Product Y. If you're willing to bolt Product Y onto one of your menus I will pay you this stack of money for it! Company: $$$! Bam! The company just went from being a product company to a custom engineering service. You will have to…

Ideally you would avoid this situation, but if you find yourself here: a good mitigation strategy is feature flags. If it's been agreed to build feature Y for one customer, then enable that feature for only that one customer. It's not a panacea, and won't necessarily help with your tech debt, but it will help the product stay focused from a user perspective.

FWIW, every product I've worked on has gone through this.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#155

Post by SFJulie »

CPLX wrote: post #50

Posting an article called "users you don't want" and then using a developmentally challenged teenager as the example of a user that you don't want is so spectacularly tone-deaf that I am left somewhat speechless. I keep thinking this will be the year that the valley types wake up and realize this kind of mentality puts them in existential danger from mobs with pitchforks, but it keeps not happening.

They will probably say that we live under «the tyranny of the minority» and whine that business are made expansive by following regulations that ought to make their goods/service accessible to the disabled (like every business).

On the other hand imposing gluten free/peanuts free/convservative free healthy over priced diets seem fine to them.

New tech industry seems pretty living with a double standard about what is acceptable: imposing their price on real estate/food. Being not okay to respect accessibility. There are against the tyranny of minorities unless it is them.

It seems a tad Victorian (Eugenist, hygienist and Malthusianist) to me.

(schlink, schlink, (the noise of sharpening the pitchfork))

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#156

Post by makomk »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #151
makomk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason all that "sharing economy" stuff works is that you can afford to have worse capital utilization if you ignore existing regulations. For example, there's a big difference between what people can afford to pay for hotel stays and what they can afford to pay to live somewhere which means that dedicated AirBNB apartments can stay empty a large chunk of the time if you ignore zoning regulations intended to bloc…

> there's a big difference between what people can afford to pay for hotel stays and what they can afford to pay to live somewhere ... which means that the capital associated with "people living somewhere" is poorly allocated, and would be more profitable utilized as a nice hotel space. Capital utilization isn't just about the raw duty cycle of someone using that capital. You don't markedly improve your organization'…

Only if you assume that the best utilization of scarce resources is the most profitable one. Filling the same number of people's needs about as well at about the same price using several times the real estate, meaning that other people can't find anywhere to live, is less efficient for any definition of efficiency other than "what capitalism decides". People actually having homes is not the equivalent of running SETI@Home on idle computers, nor does it become a worthless waste of little or no benefit to you or society at large just because it's more profitable to keep those units empty and use them as hotels for a few months of the year.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#157

Post by ozim »

bsder wrote: post #79

Hmmmm. It probably depends upon how much money were talking. If the customer is throwing around a couple million dollars of NRE, it's probably worth bolting something on and pocketing the money. If the customer is only moving a couple hundred thousand, it's probably not. This seems more like a software-only startup issue. We have hardware and have these hard-nosed discussions all the time--generally about volume. Cus…

Nice today I have learned.

I thought you just includ NRE in the price you offer to the customer so it can be amortized by volume. But yeah it makes sense if volume will not be realized and you do not want to make bets on your comapny with someones else customers.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#159

Post by IanCal »

nostrademons wrote: post #81
IanCal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the US but in the UK what you're suggesting would I think be illegal. You shouldn't make things accessible just when you're a large company, that's a really disappointing approach.

Nobody is going to sue the company they've never heard of. If they have heard of you, you're in a good position to start worrying about things like accessibility/scalability/security.

Scalability is something it seems reasonable to leave until you're more sure you actually need it. There's also no legal requirement around scaling, and you're not affecting a specific group of people.

Accessibility is a legal requirement in the UK, and while you're right it's unlikely to come back to bite you as a small company, that's also a pretty crappy attitude to take. I don't like the practice of deliberately breaking the law anyway, but deliberately breaking the law requiring equal access to people with disabilities is awful.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#160

Post by thaumasiotes »

geofft wrote: post #112
dbsmith83 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your concerns as a whole, but maybe not your analysis of the accommodation. If the startup is merely a platform for connecting babysitters and parents, babysitters could choose whom they want to babysit. A babysitter who was not qualified to deal with a developmentally challenged kid or infant should not have to, and probably shouldn't.

Hmmm. That idea is definitely appealing, but the "platform" argument has some serious negative side effects that I think the government should legitimately be able to regulate. What if babysitters of one race didn't want to sit babies of another race? Should they be forced to? This isn't a hypothetical example—Airbnb has this exact problem.

> What if babysitters of one race didn't want to sit babies of another race? Should they be forced to?

I have a hard time seeing where you think this is a tricky question. Let's imagine a terrible person, so terrible that there are no moral issues with just making them do whatever we want.

We've got a racist white babysitter who hates black children. Fortunately, we know better than they do, so we're going to... shut black children up alone with them for long periods? What parents do you think want to hire babysitters who personally hate their children? Why would it be a good idea to facilitate that?

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