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Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

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Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

doctorless wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Supporting progressive candidates with tech for Congressional midterms. Huge ROI if effective, and they’d only be needed for 100 days. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sanders-campaign-technol...

Same could be said for conservative candidates. You’re making the assumption the userbase of HN is politically homogenous, when it is not.

It’s pretty clear conservative policies are a train wreck and are slowly eating the country alive (tax cuts for businesses solely for shareholder gain, erosion of social services, infrastructure neglect, an illogical trade war with everyone, etc).

Forget social agenda, I’m just asking for some sane fiscal policy at this point. Stop wasting scarce resources. Stop corruption. Stop passing the buck to my kids to clean up. That’s my desire and my goal.

So yeah, give me 100 tech workers for 100 days and I’ll show you phenomenal return on investment through public policy surrogates who support policy that’ll improve quality of life drastically while saving the country tens of billions of dollars.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#12

Post by pro_zac »

I recently watched a video of Kevin Horton discussing creation of the Super NT, SNES on an FPGA. He mentions doing the same for the N64 would be extremely difficult. It's not gonna change the world, but it would be a fun challenge to throw some resources at.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#13

Post by ericjang »

Auction the team as a resource to the highest bidder. I'm not positioned to deploy this resource effectively, so I'm likely to benefit most by trading it to a buyer who can't convert money into talent fast enough.

The team is much more valuable to someone who can afford to pay long-term salaries and needs this talent resource quickly on an up-front basis (Tesla, Uber, a startup trying to crush their competitor, etc.)

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#14

Post by chipuni »

The people, by themselves, wouldn't be enough. Let's assume we have the people AND the kind of resources 100 people working at Amazon would have.

Then I would have them work on a multi-pronged project to get a higher percent of people in the US voting.

One team would be campaigning in all states against laws that make it hard to vote.

Another team would be finding the most cost-effective ways to register voters, educate voters accurately about what each candidate represents and has done, and get them to the polls.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#16

Post by anoncoward111 »

Instead of worrying about the practicality of this, I'll answer your question directly.

I would aim to create as many blueprints as possible for tools that can help more people live and work remotely and sustainably.

There is no greater threat to human health, human happiness, and human productivity, than there is in meaningless desk work and commuting.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#17

Post by theossuary »

arthev wrote: post #5
trcollinson wrote: post #2

As a theoretical experiment it’s interesting. But it would never ever work. You’d literally spend a year or more trying to prepare for that 100 days and I’m still not convinced you’d get anything out of it. Now, if you were going to give me 6 people that would be a different story. With 6 people I have a number of startup ideas that I would love to work on and I think I could get a working mvp out of in 100 days. As…

Agreed. I have no idea how to manage 100 people, nor how to utilize 100 people in any effective way. I guess I would be hacking the challenge by holding some clumsy event on the first day or two where we sorted into 5 to 20 different teams, and then got to work on a lot of things in parallel. And then people could switch around between teams as interested or as they might use their skills.

I think it's a fair assumption to say one of those hundred would have the experience to manage the other 99, and allow you to play stakeholder, not project director. That said, hard to imagine getting a lot done in 3 months with a 100 person program.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#18

Post by seiferteric »

doctorless wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Supporting progressive candidates with tech for Congressional midterms. Huge ROI if effective, and they’d only be needed for 100 days. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sanders-campaign-technol...

Same could be said for conservative candidates. You’re making the assumption the userbase of HN is politically homogenous, when it is not.

He's doing no such thing. The question was what YOU would do with 100 people, and he answered straightforwardly.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#19

Post by rustler »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
doctorless wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be said for conservative candidates. You’re making the assumption the userbase of HN is politically homogenous, when it is not.

It’s pretty clear conservative policies are a train wreck and are slowly eating the country alive (tax cuts for businesses solely for shareholder gain, erosion of social services, infrastructure neglect, an illogical trade war with everyone, etc). Forget social agenda, I’m just asking for some sane fiscal policy at this point. Stop wasting scarce resources. Stop corruption. Stop passing the buck to my kids to clean u…

Many argue the leftist policies of San Francisco's government have been a train wreck too.
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