Users You Don’t Want • Hacker News Board

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#161

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 9:46 AM UTC

m4chth1s wrote: post #140

geofft wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that argument not apply to "It's 1960, and I don't want to seat black customers at my fancy restaurant because it's statistically likely to be less profitable than seating white customers"?

I've never worked in the restaurant industry, but, I've heard from people who have that it's STILL extremely common for black customers to be considered undesirable. I.e. a server will get upset at a host(ess) if they get "too many" black customers assigned to their tables. Why? Servers claim that black customers - on average - tip less. I don't know how prevalent this belief on the part of servers is. And I don't kn…

> There can be a really fine line between statistics/machine learning and "bias"/"racism".

There's no line. Learning and bias are the same thing.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#162

Post by cpkpad » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 10:30 AM UTC

... Only one of the cases he listed, the developmentally-challenged kid, would result in a lawsuit if he didn't accommodate.

That's one where you throw money at the problem. You hire a custom operator to handle ADA-requests (and similar) and you pay the price difference for someone who does manage this. Legal compliance issues, you often turn into a mega-expensive non-engineering one-offs.

Or you get slapped with a DoJ investigation, and lose the business.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#163

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 10:33 AM UTC

cpkpad wrote: post #162

... Only one of the cases he listed, the developmentally-challenged kid, would result in a lawsuit if he didn't accommodate. That's one where you throw money at the problem. You hire a custom operator to handle ADA-requests (and similar) and you pay the price difference for someone who does manage this. Legal compliance issues, you often turn into a mega-expensive non-engineering one-offs. Or you get slapped with a D…

[deleted]

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#164

Post by calgoo » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 10:36 AM UTC

warfangle wrote: post #145

ixtli wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent definitely exists in a software-only startup with enough users. In practice it's rarely the case that it's _one_ user, but that there are cohorts of users that want a certain thing you don't provide. I still agree with your point, though, that if those cohorts aren't gonna give you enough money you shouldn't let your development process get sidetracked by their desires.

Unless you're in enterprise software. It's really easy for enterprise companies to get in the trap of making every customer a spacial snowflake, because they need to to get a half mil contract signed. And then the product becomes sorta shapeless, because each customer gets their own product... And you end up a consultancy instead of the platform/SaaS that you originally envisioned.

And then that project half dies because of replacement XY which is sooo much better /s. Now you are stuck on a legacy platform, and if you have great sales people who included this system in the contract worth $10M+ and no replacement exists, you cant get rid off it. So someone has to manage the legacy platform, where all docs where lost and no one has the domain knowledge as everyone has left. Now guess what happens when the company finds out you setup the servers, "Hey, you setup these servers, so you are now responsible for the platform, congratulations!"....

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#165

Post by alex_hitchins » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 10:44 AM UTC

usea wrote: post #154

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.

I worked on a large codebase with this approach of 'feature for x'. It will not scale, IMHO.

Far better to agree with someone wanting feature N is that if you want it and it's a good fit for the majority of users, you pay for it - everyone gets it.

It is a hard problem to tackle, especially given the sums involved in delivering sometimes trivial-effort features.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#166

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #160

geofft wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're missing the option of "kick them off the platform entirely".

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#167

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 11:17 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #161

m4chth1s wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worked in the restaurant industry, but, I've heard from people who have that it's STILL extremely common for black customers to be considered undesirable. I.e. a server will get upset at a host(ess) if they get "too many" black customers assigned to their tables. Why? Servers claim that black customers - on average - tip less. I don't know how prevalent this belief on the part of servers is. And I don't kn…

> There can be a really fine line between statistics/machine learning and "bias"/"racism". There's no line. Learning and bias are the same thing.

The question is whether the bias is actually justified by experience.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#168

Post by pc86 » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 12:03 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #138

derefr wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent: who are the "big consulting firms [who pay] actual money"? SAP? IBM? Salesforce?

I'd assume companies like Pivotal, ThoughtWorks, and such.

And hundreds (thousands?) of other ones who don't regularly make the front page of HN.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#169

Post by prof_hobart » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 1:21 PM UTC

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.

This is the exact reason that the Disability Discrimination Act, now the Equality Act, was introduced in the UK (no idea whether there's any equivalent elsewhere). It's illegal to for a business to discriminate their service based on a customer's disability.

Re: Users You Don’t Want

#170

Post by falcolas » Thu, Aug 18, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

riboflava wrote: post #69

falcolas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the need is great, but there isn't a lot of extra money to be made? Should the minority with disabilities be forced to pay extra to convince someone to provide them with otherwise identical functionality? Many accommodations, if not federally mandated, simply wouldn't happen. For example, handicapped parking spots. People who use those spots are technically capable of using other parking locations as well, an…

Yes to your second question. Maybe the government can offer a tax return bonus to cover it. And pump more money into fully general cures for all disabilities. I'm not against making disabled peoples' lives better, but focusing entirely on the supplier side is a mistake.

What is the cure for having amputated legs while being poor?

The cure for a lack of legs is typically prosthetics with extensive therapy. Incredibly expensive and labor intensive.

The cure for amputated legs while being poor is a wheelchair; not as easily managed without additional space when parked, and if there are no ramps up to your building, your business is effectively inaccessible.

But ramps cost extra money. So do wheelchair accessible curbs. You need more space in the isles, specialized bathroom stalls, special door handles, support for someone closer to the floor at your counters... Lots of things we take for granted today, but which didn't exist for many years before the ADA.