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A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

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Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you replied to pointed out where leaders were failing them. Rather than empathizing, you skipped to pointing out what they should be doing instead. They made a hyperbolic comment (“literally shooting out knives”) and you’ve focused on dissecting it and accused them of using inaccurate language. Of course they’re just exaggerating when they said that even if people were losing eyes management wouldn’t care.…

> rather than empathizing, you skipped hmmmm... I had tried to convey "hey, not being listened to really sucks" but now that I re-read "That lack of weight given to your experience as a signal of real business cost is a real problem." that's a pretty damn sterile way to express that. Also you're right that it should come first before the "here is this other perspective you should consider" bit. > You switched to firs…

Literally has not meant what you perceive it to mean, as a wholly intentional and really existing condition, since at least the 18th century. Your response seems to nitpick to the point of pedantry, rather than addressing the steel-manned version of the argument, or even necessarily arguing the argument itself.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#422
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> neoliberal ideology gripped most of the newly independent states I wish. There was a great liberal leap forward in the 90s, but now it's state-run economy all over again.

I think it wa a disaster for Russia, didn't really happen in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova; meh for Romainia, Bulgaria, pretty good for some of the Warsaw countries west of those (DDR a special case). Anything can be exploited (communism or complete liberalism/libertarianism and everything between) but the people who did the best* seemed to have taken less an ideological view and more of a pick and choose with a slight l…

> I think it wa a disaster for Russia,

Quite the opposite - the GDP rose dramatically, the standard of living too.

> I'm talking about the 1990s and early 00s.

That's the problem: these policies have a delayed effect. They were inacted in early 90s, and the country reaped all their benefits in mid 00s, while they were already scaled back and revamped. And for the last 5-10 years of stagnation have been the direct result of the latter.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the rule is that the other conferencing system always works better than the current system until you buy it. Then they all seem to fail :) Right now we are using MS Teams which so far has been reliable. I am just waiting for the day when it becomes flaky too.

Teams actually works well for us too. My only complaint is about startup time and the consistent 2 or 3 second hangs that happen when I'm typing things sometimes.

So for the n+1: For us there are lots of problems. Bluetooth headsets seem to make it nondeterministic if and how sound works. Sharing and videoconf have sometimes extreme bandwidth problems. People aren’t getting into the conference sometimes.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>When you have the govt doing central planning, there is no way to get rid of them when they under perform. All Democratic governments include a way to do exactly that - by definition. There's room for debate over how effective it actually is at removing underperformers compared to the free market, but saying it has no way to get rid of them is just untrue.

Is there? How often does the american federal government shrink? How would it shrink, if it turned out that it was too big?

In a democratic government, you're not electing the central planners. In the american government, you're not electing any of the millions of three-letter agencies that rule your life. You hire a president, and he may or may not do something, who knows.

At least a market has some contact with a ground truth of bankruptcy. If there were several competing EPA's competing for money on the basis of their efficacy, that might be interesting.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>When you have the govt doing central planning, there is no way to get rid of them when they under perform. All Democratic governments include a way to do exactly that - by definition. There's room for debate over how effective it actually is at removing underperformers compared to the free market, but saying it has no way to get rid of them is just untrue.

>All Democratic governments include a way to do exactly that - by definition. There's room for debate over how effective it actually is at removing underperformers compared to the free market, but saying it has no way to get rid of them is just untrue.

You are either young and naive, or an idiot. Sorry, name calling is the only way to call out ignorance. Things simply don't work the way you think it does. In theory 'democracy' promises you a lot of things, but you get very little. Most democracies for most part are sophisticated form of oligarchy where the masses are essentially fed what to think, by propaganda, 'debates' etc.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#426
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of these services get quite expensive very quickly once you go over the free threshold. The free plans are just a loss leader to encourage vendor lock-in. For example, I used to use the MixPanel free plan in a project and went over the limit and suddenly the plan cost around a thousand dollars per year.

Doesn't sound like a lot of money for a business.

For a bootstrapped business who is talking about their ~$250/month outgoings it is. The problem is that the expenditure doesn't grow linearly with growth so there will be a window of growth where the company starts achieving "diseconomies of scale". This may or may not be factored into their business plan.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#427

Not exactly the same, but I have sometimes wondered how many startups are just burning other startups' money, and would collapse if VCs tightened the belt. For instance, startup X seems profitable but all revenue is from other startups not making money yet. Like a big ponzi scheme of sorts. Most products mentioned in the article are now mainstream, but for lots of them a few years back they were small and only used b…

PG talks about noticing the same phenomenon - when at Yahoo during the dotcom bubble - in the beginning of this article: http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html

Good essay otherwise, but you can tell this was written a while ago:

Google has over 82 million unique users a month and annual revenues of about three billion dollars. And yet have you ever seen a Google ad? Something is going on here.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you are not aware that economic mobility (i.e. ending up in a different income (or wealth) quintile/decile than you were born into is at an all-time low in the United States.

Do you have a source for that? I am aware, according to the Brookings Institute, and world renowned economist Professor Raj Chetty, that it has been relatively flat for decades. Your parents wealth, and where you are born are the two biggest factors for economic mobility. Always has been, most likely always will be, so this isn't necessarily news or novel. So again, not sure divisive rhetoric and entrenching a feelin…

> Your parents wealth, and where you are born are the two biggest factors for economic mobility

The entire point of "economic mobility" is as a measure of the extent to which that statement is not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_... (cites several survey papers and 1 or 2 originals)

From a 2015 stanford report (https://web.stanford.edu/~pmitnik/EconomicMobilityintheUnite...):

"Approximately half of parental income advantages are passed on to children. The IGE, when averaged across all levels of parental income, is estimated at 0.52 for men and 0.47 for women. These estimates are at the high end of previous estimates and imply that the United States is very immobile."

Lots more where that came from.

This isn't class warfare. It's a statement of fact that in the USA you are likely to remain in the income bracket you were born into. What do to about that is where "class warfare" begins, if you insist on using that term.

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#429
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complexity catastrophes must be suffered because paper mediated processes are impractical?

Complexity catastrophes are rare and seldom actually catastrophic. It's easier to deal with occasional catastrophes than with the delays and inconveniences imposed by paper processes.

I cited definition of complexity catastrophe for purposes of my thesis.

What's your definition?

Re: A two-person startup already uses twenty-eight other tools

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"INSERT only, no UPDATEs" - sounds like event sourcing?

Or an append only log. Either way, not things unheard of in software engineering.

Obvious in hind sight.

Fowler's Event Sourcing [2005] https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html

Published after I stumbled onto my solution.

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