Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

secondbreakfast.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 445 posts

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#181

Post by jimnotgym »

neilwilson wrote: post #159
cambalache wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want your mind to be blown even more? I worked for a multinational company, I would not be surpised that this company is among the top 10 SAP customers worldwide. Well, everybody hated hated hated SAP, it was a huge hindrance instead of any help.Any use beyond of a "dumb" database was a huge PITA, and I am not fully convinced that all in all it helped more than damaged the business. It was clunky, unintutive, slow, u…

Same with accounts generation. Almost certainly most operations accounts and tax filings could be fully auto generated from their bookkeeping - if the bookkeeping was good enough. You could do that by constraining the bookkeeping and adding some intelligence to the reporting. So why do bookkeeping firms like Xero stop at basic bookkeeping? Because they sell via accountants - who make a lot of money piping data from o…

'Almost certainly most operations accounts and tax filings could be fully auto generated from their bookkeeping - if the bookkeeping was good enough.'

I firmly disagree. I am supposed to be reviewing accounts right now....accruals, prepayments, deferred income, the difference between capital and expense, capital allowances, R&D allowances, dividends vs salaries, consolidation of groups. The average bookkeeper is not expected to work at this level. That all requires judgement and experience and expertise. That is why Xero stop at the easy bit

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#182

Post by MandieD »

anonytrary wrote: post #77
imgabe wrote: post #46

Not just software, but everything. Look around you. Everything around you was made somewhere. The example I like to use is shower curtain rings. Those plastic or metal things that hold your shower curtain onto the rod. Somewhere, there's a factory that makes those. The person who owns that factory is probably rich. My first job out of college was working for a company that makes tilt-tray sorter systems. These are gi…

When I have kids, I'm gonna play a game with them where we look at random stuff and try to make up how it got there, and then compare that to how it really got there. I bet if you did this consistently with kids during their formative years, it would be a great way to teach them about the world and the economy. My parents just had a huge book room with encyclopedias that I was expected to pick up and read.

I’m expecting our first in a few months, so I’ll pass this great idea along to my husband, a mechanical engineer.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#183

Post by loosetypes »

anonytrary wrote: post #77
imgabe wrote: post #46

Not just software, but everything. Look around you. Everything around you was made somewhere. The example I like to use is shower curtain rings. Those plastic or metal things that hold your shower curtain onto the rod. Somewhere, there's a factory that makes those. The person who owns that factory is probably rich. My first job out of college was working for a company that makes tilt-tray sorter systems. These are gi…

When I have kids, I'm gonna play a game with them where we look at random stuff and try to make up how it got there, and then compare that to how it really got there. I bet if you did this consistently with kids during their formative years, it would be a great way to teach them about the world and the economy. My parents just had a huge book room with encyclopedias that I was expected to pick up and read.

How would figure out how it really got there though?

That you can, for the most part, peel back layers and trace steps back to an origin is one of my favorite things about code.

But for a heterogeneous system of opaque supply chains in the physical world?

For any given random stuff, I don’t know that I could make reliable progress in that endeavor.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#184

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

tlb wrote: post #59

The metal economy is huge. Almost every product requires metal. But metallurgists don't take home a big fraction of it. What's special about the software economy is that people who write the software take home a large fraction of it. Maybe more than half, depending how you count. Which is unprecedented. It's not just because software can be zero marginal cost. Musicians don't take home half of music revenue. In most…

My hypothesis for why tech has high salaries is stock compensation and fast growth. For example, Google stock is nearly 2x what it was 3-4 years ago. If you have a four year grant and had about half your comp in stock, then 2xing the stock means you're making 50% more now, assuming you didn't get any promotions or anything. If you're trying to hire folks away from these situations, your pre-stock-growth starting offer has to compete with their post-stock-growth comp, so starting offers have pressure to grow over time.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#185

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

cambalache wrote: post #34
_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

Want your mind to be blown even more? I worked for a multinational company, I would not be surpised that this company is among the top 10 SAP customers worldwide. Well, everybody hated hated hated SAP, it was a huge hindrance instead of any help.Any use beyond of a "dumb" database was a huge PITA, and I am not fully convinced that all in all it helped more than damaged the business. It was clunky, unintutive, slow, u…

Harder than it sounds. A complete drop-in replacement requires an almost unbelievable amount of internationalisation and research. And even if you can get all of that lined up, B2B sales and marketing - and inertia - are a huge challenge.

It's not that it couldn't be done, but it's very much a moon shot and it's not going to happen without someone charismatic and experienced driving it and selling it.

Specific niche feature SAP-a-likes are more plausible on a smaller scale, but sales and marketing will always be the real challenge.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#186

Post by philiplu »

Swizec wrote: post #61
imgabe wrote: post #46

Not just software, but everything. Look around you. Everything around you was made somewhere. The example I like to use is shower curtain rings. Those plastic or metal things that hold your shower curtain onto the rod. Somewhere, there's a factory that makes those. The person who owns that factory is probably rich. My first job out of college was working for a company that makes tilt-tray sorter systems. These are gi…

You know the ends of shoeleaces, those little plastic bits? Roughly a 800,000,000/year industry Cardboard box industry in USA is bigger than the NFL, NHL, NBA, and the other major sports leagues combined

Those are called aglets, and when I just now googled for “aglet manufacturers”, I got way more hits than I expected.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#187

Post by ComodoHacker »

MattGaiser wrote: post #126
tlb wrote: post #59

The metal economy is huge. Almost every product requires metal. But metallurgists don't take home a big fraction of it. What's special about the software economy is that people who write the software take home a large fraction of it. Maybe more than half, depending how you count. Which is unprecedented. It's not just because software can be zero marginal cost. Musicians don't take home half of music revenue. In most…

Metal economy is huge, but there are inputs. Software engineers have no inputs into our projects besides our work and some hardware and electricity. A developer is 99% of the cost of a piece of software.

You've missed coffee!

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#188

Post by flarg »

dvdhsu wrote: post #27
_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

Hey! I'm David, the editor of the post you linked to. If there are any other topics you're interested in learning about, please let me know! We wrote another one on Salesforce ( https://retool.com/blog/salesforce-for-engineers/ ) that was well received on HN too ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20277115 ). We were thinking about writing about Marketo / marketing automation solutions next. (I'm david AT retool.c…

Did you ever look at pega, nintex and Appian?

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#189

Post by badpun »

deng wrote: post #156
_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

I'm in Germany and of course everyone here has at least heard of SAP and knows it's huge, but I guess not many people know just how huge. SAP consultancy is a big market here with lots and lots of job openings. I knew a few people who did that, it's usually a very well paid job, but it's well paid because otherwise no one in his right mind would do it. From what I heard, it's incredibly boring while at the same time…

I've heard very similar things about being a SAP consultant here in Europe - basically, it sounds like a job for someone who:

- understands technology, but is not a big fan of it

- can communicate with clients

- can handle stress well

- is into salary maximization

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#190

Post by auggierose »

jimnotgym wrote: post #181
neilwilson wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with accounts generation. Almost certainly most operations accounts and tax filings could be fully auto generated from their bookkeeping - if the bookkeeping was good enough. You could do that by constraining the bookkeeping and adding some intelligence to the reporting. So why do bookkeeping firms like Xero stop at basic bookkeeping? Because they sell via accountants - who make a lot of money piping data from o…

'Almost certainly most operations accounts and tax filings could be fully auto generated from their bookkeeping - if the bookkeeping was good enough.' I firmly disagree. I am supposed to be reviewing accounts right now....accruals, prepayments, deferred income, the difference between capital and expense, capital allowances, R&D allowances, dividends vs salaries, consolidation of groups. The average bookkeeper is not…

That sounds all pretty trivial.
Post reply on HN