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Small Projects, Big Companies

pioneer.app

41–50 of 77 posts

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm considering submitting a project that would fit well under this category. Have any ideas around what could be done to mitigate the involved risks?

stop?

If you believe yourself to be an ethical person then you want to build companies like those yourself rather than stop, since you can be sure that you'll do your best to handle data properly while providing the world with that service. In the case of the Big 5 there are not many companies I know of that are providing the service as proposed in the article so you would have a chance to set standards and expectations around what is or isn't acceptable.

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#42

Can someone elaborate on "Backchannel.app" thing ?

It's the common use-case: you don't know whether to trust someone. If you ever know anyone who is in danger of being hired by a friend, your friend will ask you how it was working with that person. This is usually a high-signal source because you're not going to lie to your friend, your recommendation or anti-recommendations are things you want to be meaningful, and because you have direct evidence. They want to scal…

But once you automate the backchannnel, it becomes impersonal. If someone is vindictive they can ruin careers through such a system. If you dont actually know a person, how can you trust their recommendation?

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stop?

If you believe yourself to be an ethical person then you want to build companies like those yourself rather than stop, since you can be sure that you'll do your best to handle data properly while providing the world with that service. In the case of the Big 5 there are not many companies I know of that are providing the service as proposed in the article so you would have a chance to set standards and expectations ar…

Doesn’t this assume that it’s ethical to use data-driven psychometric profiling and targeting with the aim to increase profit?

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#44
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Information is doing this: https://www.theinformation.com/org-charts

Interesting, that looks like exactly what they're talking about. Are you a subscriber, and if so how are the charts?

It's mostly the who reports to whom part and goes about 1 to 4 levels below the CEO.

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#45

I love that the post points out the importance of selling to executives instead of users. As much as users hate most of their tools, they have very little say on what gets bought. Executives make those decisions and no amount of grousing or changing from internal users will change that. Solutions that sell upwards in an org (yammer for example) are very much the exception.

> I love that the post points out the importance of selling to executives instead of users. As much as users hate most of their tools, they have very little say on what gets bought. Executives make those decisions and no amount of grousing or changing from internal users will change that.

It's possible to "sell" directly to users, but you have to have a particular pricing structure: free to individuals.

This is what TravisCI, Dropbox and Slack did.

You actually have to have a really good product to pull this off, though.

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe yourself to be an ethical person then you want to build companies like those yourself rather than stop, since you can be sure that you'll do your best to handle data properly while providing the world with that service. In the case of the Big 5 there are not many companies I know of that are providing the service as proposed in the article so you would have a chance to set standards and expectations ar…

Doesn’t this assume that it’s ethical to use data-driven psychometric profiling and targeting with the aim to increase profit?

What if those originally submitting the data could share in the profits?

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stop?

If you believe yourself to be an ethical person then you want to build companies like those yourself rather than stop, since you can be sure that you'll do your best to handle data properly while providing the world with that service. In the case of the Big 5 there are not many companies I know of that are providing the service as proposed in the article so you would have a chance to set standards and expectations ar…

While the data might be handled responsibly, what you're suggesting assumes that inferring personality traits as a business model can be used for ethical purposes. I think there's a fair number of people on here that would say that trying to guess a person's personality based on their media consumption or otherwise is implicitly unethical no matter how you do it, since it's in support of the monetization of another person's emotions. The output of such a system is used to manipulate a person (making purchases, drive them towards a political position, make them a more productive employee, etc) or it's a sham and the data is bogus. In either case, there's a compelling argument to be made that this system's creator is not doing a good thing.

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#48

I love that the post points out the importance of selling to executives instead of users. As much as users hate most of their tools, they have very little say on what gets bought. Executives make those decisions and no amount of grousing or changing from internal users will change that. Solutions that sell upwards in an org (yammer for example) are very much the exception.

> I love that the post points out the importance of selling to executives instead of users. As much as users hate most of their tools, they have very little say on what gets bought. Executives make those decisions and no amount of grousing or changing from internal users will change that. It's possible to "sell" directly to users, but you have to have a particular pricing structure: free to individuals. This is what…

Slack? In every company I know that uses it, it was blessed by IT. It’s hard to adopt for a subset of users in the company.

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#49

Number 4 is ethical quicksand. Please don’t build a machine that guesses personality traits based on personal data. It won’t end well.

In the past when people created arbitrary unquantifiable categories and then proceeded to put people in them based off of unempirical/irrational voodoo it was called superstition (ex. Astrology). Involve a computer in your rituals and now it's AI.

Re: Small Projects, Big Companies

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t this assume that it’s ethical to use data-driven psychometric profiling and targeting with the aim to increase profit?

What if those originally submitting the data could share in the profits?

I'll shoot you in the leg but I'll give you back 10% of your hospital bills out of the 20% kickback I get from the hospital.
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