It may be irrational, but I have a visceral hatred for people who make something free online and then take it down after they find a way to charge for it, especially if the community they were posting it on collaborated with editing, feedback, and suggestions.
The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
231–240 of 317 posts
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#232I can call out one example of a poorly executed price raise: Apollo Engine ( https://www.apollographql.com/pricing ) There was a time when they charged for data points/performance traces ingested into the system. At our scale, we were paying around $100/month. We were prepared to scale that to their, I think it was, $550/month plan when our usage got that high. They relatively recently changed their structure to char…
I have a similar story. Year is 2014 and client was using a very specific payment processor because the client was part of UK government and credit card processing was to be done using only that processor - you know, politics and stuff when dealing with government. So the payment processor, after absorbing a good chunk of this organization became a behemoth, with a lot of political power and overnight they decided to…
It's a rare client who pays more than the agreed-upon price.
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "in an ideal world you could go up the food chain and say, "hey, if we spend $10,000 on this, we save $100,000 in employee hours". That should be the easiest decision in the world, especially if you could come back in a year and figure out it was really $105,000." In an ideal world, yes. In the average large organization in the real world, though, very few people care about "saving employee hours". Particularly in…
> When a team's workload falls by 50%, there's rarely a magical stream of "useful work" that arises to replace it with. Yes, there is. It's known as "addressing technical debt".
Yes, but what's the customer revenue gain from it?
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#234This is a good cautionary tale and one I've seen played out in the tech industry with food. Even in the 80's it wasn't uncommon for a tech company to have a "beer bust" on Friday's where drinks and snacks were served as a social gathering for employees at the end of the work week. It was a turning point in employee relations when the VP of HR at Sun cancelled the weekly beer bust. Similarly at Google when they decide…
Keep in mind that, according to your post, it was the VP of HR, not Finance, that shut it down. Sun didn't end the outings for financial reasons -- the HR dept decided, unfortunately, that it was legally prudent to stop serving alcohol and to end the encouragement of socializing between employees.
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I never understood The airlines are masters at A/B testing and figuring out what works best, as the industry is notoriously low margin and very cut-throat. You can bet that they price things this way because it works better. BTW, people pay a lot extra for first class tickets and love the "free" drinks. Different classes is how the airlines optimize profits from different market segments. They're very good at this.
"Masters of A/B testing" is, in my opinion, a gross overstatement. However what is true, is that a large number of people will automatically choose the lowest available option among airfares, without considering comfort or amenities. When your product is efficiently lined up against your competitors, sorted by price alone, (i.e. Expedia, Kayak...), then being second-place by $3 is enough to impact sales volume. It's…
That underestimates how sophisticated the airline's slicing and dicing of the market is. Ever wonder why no two people on a flight paid the same price? Why there are a proliferation of classes on board?
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Masters of A/B testing" is, in my opinion, a gross overstatement. However what is true, is that a large number of people will automatically choose the lowest available option among airfares, without considering comfort or amenities. When your product is efficiently lined up against your competitors, sorted by price alone, (i.e. Expedia, Kayak...), then being second-place by $3 is enough to impact sales volume. It's…
That underestimates how sophisticated the airline's slicing and dicing of the market is. Ever wonder why no two people on a flight paid the same price? Why there are a proliferation of classes on board?
Beyond economy class, of course the price is less of a factor (didn't realize that needed to be stated).
"No two people paid the same price" is a myth, most certainly not true. Ever book 2+ seats at the same time?
Airlines do use yield management techniques, however, which results in pricing that changes for the same resource over time. That's not A/B testing, and like anything that relies on a lot of forecasts as inputs, bad forecasts up front often lead to sub-optimal revenue totals.
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#237I didn't know about the Red Cross and its donuts. The example I've always used for this is helping a friend move. If the friend asks "hey, will you help me move? I'm buying pizza and beer afterwards!" I will more than likely say yes, even though I can buy my own pizza and beer. If they instead say "hey, will you help me move? I'll pay you $21.58 for your time," I'd probably bristle. Even though that might be the equi…
Where does a few slices of pizza and a beer cost $21?
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#238I didn't know about the Red Cross and its donuts. The example I've always used for this is helping a friend move. If the friend asks "hey, will you help me move? I'm buying pizza and beer afterwards!" I will more than likely say yes, even though I can buy my own pizza and beer. If they instead say "hey, will you help me move? I'll pay you $21.58 for your time," I'd probably bristle. Even though that might be the equi…
Where does a few slices of pizza and a beer cost $21?
They said beer, not a beer. In Australia, the cheapest 6 pack you can buy is about $22.
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#239Is there anybody alive that holds this grudge? Even with the article from 2012, I don't know Was this grudge instilled in children?
> Was this grudge instilled in children?
Oddly enough, probably yes. The military is a family business, something like 80% of servicemembers have a family member who served. So grandpa bitches about that time back in 1944 when he had to pay for donuts, and you make sure all your buddies know about it.
Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret
#240Both of my grandfathers retired SMSgts and I have two veteran flag cases above the monitor where this was typed.
According to my late paternal grandparents, who went through WWII, Korea, and Vietnam on active duty (and arguably the wives did as well), the American Red Cross had not-so-nice aspects to it that didn't get much press.
Perhaps national governments should support apolitical, non-religious volunteer nonprofits more, but I can also understand the need for nonprofits to survive (which may often entail charging small fees). Charging people for doughnuts who don't make much money to begin with, are first-responders, active-duty military, or individuals who just went through a disaster seems kind of uncool where I come from.
It's difficult to say how good they are today without first-hand and multiple accounts of experience. The available data shows they presently spend 3.5% ($104m) on admin and 6% ($177m) on fundraising. https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...
As an example, Feeding America, although they pay their CEO 16% more ($100k+), is a mostly better charity on paper.