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Be Good

paulgraham.com

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Re: Be Good

#51

Post by wanorris »

allenbrunson wrote: post #43
wanorris wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly a valid point. And PG's criticisms were deserved as well. At the same time, I can't help but think some of this is an overreaction. Microsoft beat Apple as well as IBM in the market the first time by letting users pick their hardware vendor. And, even today, they still do that, and that's still Apple's achilles heel in gaining market share -- if someone wants more choice than a half a dozen or so models, th…

i think microsoft beat apple because apple was busy beating itself. apple had about a ten-year lead in gui operating systems, but couldn't keep up. steve jobs was immature, and engineered things such that he was made irrelevant in his own company. the dude's firing on all cylinders now, and is virtually unstoppable. it's very painful to switch operating systems, due to network effects. all your friends use windows, y…

"i think microsoft beat apple because apple was busy beating itself. apple had about a ten-year lead in gui operating systems, but couldn't keep up"

Microsoft gave people a clear transition to a windowing environment -- back when people weren't even sure they wanted one -- that allowed them to run hardware from any vendor they wanted, with software from the vendors they were used to using, and allowed them to load a windowing environment only when they wanted to. It was a nice, safe, incremental step. Going to Mac meant throwing everything away and starting over.

"it's very painful to switch operating systems, due to network effects."

Agreed. And don't forget: when you get there, you have a limited selection of hardware (and none at the entry level), you can't play most computer games even if you were willing to buy them all over again, and if your company has custom apps, they probably only run if you load up Parallels, which is a daunting prospect for most people.

There's no question that network effects drive Microsoft adoption. But Apple also isn't behaving like a company that wants to attract all of Microsoft's customers. It's behaving like a company that's perfectly happy skimming off the most profitable customers and collecting a premium for it.

Actually, if you want to take a look at someone that fits Paul's criteria for a company that tries to grow by acting like a nonprofit and going out of it's way to look for ways to benefit its customers, you could do worse than to look at Ubuntu. Ubuntu looks like a company that could start eating Microsoft's lunch at some point.

Re: Be Good

#52

Post by wanorris »

maxwell wrote: post #49
wanorris wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly a valid point. And PG's criticisms were deserved as well. At the same time, I can't help but think some of this is an overreaction. Microsoft beat Apple as well as IBM in the market the first time by letting users pick their hardware vendor. And, even today, they still do that, and that's still Apple's achilles heel in gaining market share -- if someone wants more choice than a half a dozen or so models, th…

Nintendo had a great comeback with the Wii after the GameCube (and even the N64). Microsoft could do something similar, but I haven't seen any indication they will.

The Windows 7 team seems to recognize that they have to recover from a colossal screwup. Whether they understand what they need to do to make that happen -- and whether they can execute on those ideas -- I have no idea.

Re: Be Good

#53

Post by eb »

9oliYQjP wrote: post #45
vesterr wrote: post #29

"And the very best hackers tend to be idealistic. They're not desperate for a job. They can work wherever they want." I've heard PG repeat this but I think it's fallacious. A lot of up-and-coming hackers can't pick and choose where to work except in the sense that any person can quit one job and apply for another one. They can't unilaterally get themselves into Google, for example. Established hackers also may have c…

I think PG's qualification of "very best" is important here. While he has restricted his assessment to programmers, that need not be the case. This is applicable to the very best in any profession. I don't consider myself to be in the category of very best hackers, but I am pretty good, and I have never worried about money. If you have a decent reputation there will always be somebody practically begging for you to t…

Absolutely. I think the meaning of "hacker" is being diluted, I'm seeing people use it interchangeably with "programmer" on this site.

When I think of great hackers, guys like Richard Stallman, Justin Frankel, or DHH come to mind. They're most certainly idealistic and only a couple of emails away from getting hired at Google.

Re: Be Good

#54

Post by attack »

abless wrote: post #26

While I am sure that there is a lot of truth in that post, I'd say that selling "sins" is much more profitable: sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco - lots of money involved.

Don't forget gambling, copyright infringement, harming for entertainment, tricking for gain.

Re: Be Good

#55

Post by [deleted] »

eb wrote: post #10
steveblgh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even YouTube/FaceBook/Flickr started along those lines. Hell, even Jimmy Wales was running a porn website ring before focusing on Wikipedia full time.

I don't think that's true. Those sites grew mostly through word of mouth. I don't consider that to be devious. What's wrong with Jimmy Wales operating a porn site? I don't see how that's related to Wikipedia.

[deleted]

Re: Be Good

#56

Post by aaronsw »

When I was a kid I was firmly in the camp of bad. The way adults used the word good, it seemed to be synonymous with quiet, so I grew up very suspicious of it. You know how there are some people whose names come up in conversation and everyone says "He's such a great guy?" People never say that about me. The best I get is "he means well." I am not claiming to be good. At best I speak good as a second language.

There are a lot of people out there who spend an enormous amount of time coming up with rationalizations to justify doing bad things. What I realized after spending a lot of time around Paul Graham is that he's actually the opposite: He spends an enormous amount of time coming up with rationalizations to justify doing good things. However bad he may want to be, his fundamental good nature always seems to win out in the end.

Re: Be Good

#57

Post by pg »

mhb wrote: post #19

I have no idea how Digi-Key is interacting with Octopart, but I have been buying parts from them for a long time and have nothing but good things to say about them. I like the company so much that I called to see if they were public so that I could buy stock; they're not. Although Octopart and its investors may be frustrated, it does Digi-Key a disservice to characterize it as "evil", not "good" or a company that isn…

It seems to me there is more to being good than having good customer service, which is the only evidence you mention here.

Re: Be Good

#58

Post by pg »

ctkrohn wrote: post #17

This isn't a new idea at all; in fact it's as old as capitalism itself. Adam Smith was one of the first to recognize that capitalism helps align the self-interest of the entrepreneur (selfishness) with the general interest of others (charity): "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to t…

This isn't a new idea at all

Which idea?

Re: Be Good

#59

Post by gruseom »

ecommercematt wrote: post #35
gruseom wrote: post #5

The business literature of previous generations often talked about "service to mankind" as an ingredient of success. This essay sheds some light on what they might have meant by that.

Do you have any links or even just names of source material? I'm curious.

I wish I could answer this because I know I've run across it many times. Unfortunately, it's all blended into a vague impression. The "power of thought" authors of whom Napoleon Hill is the most famous certainly wrote about this, but so did more conventional writers. Anyway, the only specific thing that comes to mind is this useless, but hilarious example of an old IBM company song:

  OUR I. B. M. SALESMEN
  Tune: "Jingle Bells"

  I. B. M., Happy men, smiling all the way.
  Oh what fun it is to sell our products night and day.
  I. B. M., Watson men, partners of T. J.
  In his service to mankind-that’s why we are so gay.
It happened to be fresh in my memory because I submitted a link about it the other day. Lots of jaw-dropping stuff from a bygone era: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/songs/ibm-songs/index.ht...

Re: Be Good

#60

Post by bokonist »

A lot of people do startups to get rich, so that they can then use that money or free time to do good. I've wondered though, if doing the startup is actually the most benevolent thing they will ever do. In a startup your survival is dependent on helping other people. Without that focus, it's easy to do something that appears good, but isn't really helping that much.

The only difference between a non-profit and a company is that a non-profit cannot have equity investors. If a non-profit figures out a model to help people, there is no way to scale it. Thus, non-profits are the last entities that a country wants to subsidize through the tax code.

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