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Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

getboost.io

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Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#81

Post by satysin »

posixplz wrote: post #66
ztratar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boost is 100% confidential. People talk about complex power grabs and political situations all the time. For Boost to work well, people need to be able to trust it with Information thy want confidential.

> 100% confidential Are your coaches licensed professional counselors, therapists or psychologists? If not, those conversations are not actually privileged; any disclosure of legally protected information (like a company's sensitive internal documents) would be highly improper.

This is the first thing that popped into my mind also.

Also what about legal blowback if they give really bad advice?

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#83

Post by liebsterlobster »

ztratar wrote: post #64
cookiecaper wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what are you doing about your bubble? The bubble that colors your bias on what makes good career advice? That's what the parent was talking about and you talked straight past him. That doesn't bode well for your bot's performance! I don't think this is the right format, but I do think computer-assisted political strategy is an interesting prospect. The problem with trusting other humans for political advice is th…

So first of all, this isn't a bot. I don't think a bot would be able to help with complex political situations very well. As our customer, you're our sole focus. Your needs, desires, goals, etc. We succeed when you succeed, so I don't think it's valid logic to have to worry about what Boost is looking to get out of the advice.

> We succeed when you succeed, so I don't think it's valid > logic to have to worry about what Boost is looking to get > out of the advice.

That's the only political advice you need, right there. Everyone is interested in your success, so stop worrying. sarcasm

It's funny to see this business that specifically targets people insecure about their understanding of complex political situations and tells them worrying that I would act against your interest is illogical.

Why get advice when negotiating salary? My employer succeeds when I succeed, so concerning myself with whether they are shorting me must be illogical, right?

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#84

Post by lorenzhs »

ktta wrote: post #76

@dang: Are influenced submissions investigated? This post was submitted by an account with no other submissions/comments except this. I suspect some mischief, but have no proof. Is is possible to look at the first few votes made for this post?

The submission link has UTMs: https://www.getboost.io/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=so...

This certainly smells.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#86

Post by puranjay »

backpropaganda wrote: post #61
ironic_ali wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was years ago now, but I said the same thing about that "milliondollarwebsite.com" (or something like that?), that sold pixels as advertising space on a single pahe. "What a bloody stupid idea" I said, and said to my flat mates at the time, that if it makes the money I'll run round the block naked. Fast forward a year or so later, I got sent a link (by my now old flatmate) to a BBC article saying they'd made the…

The milliondollarwebsite idea was a much more stupid idea than OP. In fact, OP should probably add more stupidity, to increase success probability. I'm only half-kidding.

I'm convinced that we enjoy and even encourage stupidity as long as it is for something frivolous, like a website for selling pixels. Or a website that ships messages on potatoes, or sends glitter filled envelopes to people.

We don't see our career as frivolous. I doubt people will tolerate stupidity in this case.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#87

Post by joncrocks »

peteretep wrote: post #52
pmiller2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work in or around the Bay Area? I don't actually know very many recruiters who are more than just salespeople.

Afraid not. While I've technically got global reach, I focus on London, and a particular niche in London.

Any tips for finding 'good' recruiters/filtering out bad ones?

And any tips for finding good recruiters in London specifically?

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#88

Post by ktta »

lorenzhs wrote: post #84
ktta wrote: post #76

@dang: Are influenced submissions investigated? This post was submitted by an account with no other submissions/comments except this. I suspect some mischief, but have no proof. Is is possible to look at the first few votes made for this post?

The submission link has UTMs: https://www.getboost.io/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=so... This certainly smells.

That was something that tipped me off too. They're very specific.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#89

Post by nul_byte »

"Hi again Boost. So I've been working at my job now for about 8 months and don't think I'm getting paid enough as a Lead Designer -- barely making rent in SF isn't fun. Is it too early to ask for a raise?"

Would someone really want to confide that much of personal glimpse into their working life to community they barely even know, or even for their current employer or future employer to possibly see one day.

Not for me.

Re: Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach

#90

Post by cookiecaper »

ztratar wrote: post #64
cookiecaper wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what are you doing about your bubble? The bubble that colors your bias on what makes good career advice? That's what the parent was talking about and you talked straight past him. That doesn't bode well for your bot's performance! I don't think this is the right format, but I do think computer-assisted political strategy is an interesting prospect. The problem with trusting other humans for political advice is th…

So first of all, this isn't a bot. I don't think a bot would be able to help with complex political situations very well. As our customer, you're our sole focus. Your needs, desires, goals, etc. We succeed when you succeed, so I don't think it's valid logic to have to worry about what Boost is looking to get out of the advice.

>So first of all, this isn't a bot. I don't think a bot would be able to help with complex political situations very well.

Phew! That's actually a big relief. For the record, I wasn't just going off the commenter above who called this a "chatbot"; I also skimmed the site and saw a bunch of stuff about "advanced AI and Machine Learning", an IM interface that looks like the other new-wavey AI talk stuff, etc., so it all seemed to comport. You should definitely make it abundantly clear on the landing page that this is subscription access to real, human career counselors.

Now I have all the same questions about the backgrounds of these career counselors. :P What kind of vetting or training is done?

As non-computers, I think the situation is more complex; how can I ensure that one of the career counselors is not in league with a political enemy? If I spill my guts to this guy, what stops him from contacting my much richer, more powerful, more attractive boss and saying "Hey, Jim Bob just developed a crazy scheme to take you down, I'll give you the details for $DOLLARS_AMOUNT"? Just the belief that Boost is full of nice people who wouldn't want to do that?

Lawyers have to check to ensure that their firm doesn't also represent the opposing party before they can take a case because of the glaring conflict of interest. How can Boost ensure that myself and political opponent A are not artificially manipulated by Boost internal staff, sent into a feedback loop primarily designed to keep both of us subscribe to Boost as long as possible, instead of moving us up the power ladder to the point where we don't need it anymore? How do I ensure that my boss and myself don't end up being advised by the same career counselor, who would know both of our moves in advance, and who therefore couldn't possibly perform his functions in an effective manner for either of us?

While I think software-assisted politics is a much more interesting business model (not buzzwordy ML/AI BS, but a "political planner" or something to help evaluate and plan), I don't necessarily think that subscription access to human counselors is a bad idea. I just think that a lot goes into it, there are a lot of potential ramifications.

What's the typical use case/scenario for this? It seems like anything people would need advice on, it's risky to trust Boost. Everything else would be simplistic advice that everyone knows, but just doesn't want to do, like "Brush your hair better". Maybe they have specific grooming tips and point to a good hair gel?

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