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

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

#431

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

Curious what fields return what fractions of benefits / value / profits to what participants, and how you'd measure and classify those.

There's SIC / NAICS / ISIC codes, or tier classifications, ranging from three (Qesnay) to five (Clark (1940), Hatt and Foote (1953), and Bell (1973)):

[A]n economy's major sectors, as delineated by Clark (1940), Hatt and Foote (1953), and Bell (1973), correspond to major stages in the essential life process. The primary sector -- agriculture, fishing, lumber, mining, oil and gas -- represents the extraction of matter from the environment to produce energy, including the calories to sustain individual organisms. The secondary sector -- processing primary goods, as in construction and manufacturing -- represents the synthesis of matter and energy into more organized forms (negentropy). The tertiary sector, including transportation and utilities, represents the infrastructure for distributing matter and energy about the system, while the quaternary sector -- trade, finance, insurance, and real estate -- constitutes a parallel infrastructure for the collection, processing, and distribution of information that is necessary in all living system for the control of material flows. Finally, the "highest" of all sectors in its remove from the physical environment is the quinary sector, including government, law, and education, representing the societal programming -- socialization, education, law making -- and collective or representative decision making to effect control.

-- James Beniger, *The Control Revolution,8 p. 179.

For participants, perhaps: unskilled labour, skilled labour, professionals, managers, finance, consumers?

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

#432

Post by perl4ever »

tripzilch wrote: post #420
bregma wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, an Ontario-wide beer retail chain, owned by the province-wide beer wholesale monopoly, in turn owned by a cartel of foreign breweries. Let me guess, you live in Toronto?

> an Ontario-wide beer retail chain, owned by the province-wide beer wholesale monopoly, in turn owned by a cartel of foreign breweries. good thing we have SAP to facilitate the development of large scale business, such as monopolies and cartels.

I don't think the existence of SAP is particularly relevant to a monopoly that exists because of statute. Although I don't live in such a state, I know there are places in the US where all the liquor stores are government run.

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

#433

Post by eru »

Nemi wrote: post #427
tripzilch wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you're describing an implementation that is disruptive to the majority of employees "on the ground" and only worthwhile to the top-level stakeholders. Only the top-level stakeholders felt the results were worthwhile the disruption and pain -- that they did not suffer . But have you ever heard of one going well ? As in, not just worthwhile to a tiny minority of the people on the top? Yeah I bet it makes stuff more…

Another way to look at it is, the top-level stakeholders are responsible for the business and not just themselves or the lives of their employees. An effective leader is thinking about what is best for the business. Not just themselves or any one part of the business. And maybe, just maybe, what is right for the business is bad for the majority of the staff. At least in the short term. I know that is a bitter pill to…

> And maybe, just maybe, what is right for the business is bad for the majority of the staff. At least in the short term. I know that is a bitter pill to swallow, but it is reality.

Perhaps an example more palatable on HN would be Uber replacing all its drivers with software. Clearly better for the business.

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

#434

Post by eru »

_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 did an internship at the SAP HQ in Germany more than a decade back.

The work was exceedingly boring. But they had excellent lunch. Better than most Google offices.

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

#435

Post by eru »

jimnotgym wrote: post #388
tomnipotent wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quickbooks will do you fine up to $100M in revenue or 8-10+ years in operation. When you cross either of those bridges, you should think about implementing a "real" ERP. But this doesn't happen until your team (accounting/finance/CEO/CFO) start running into roadblocks in either piecing together financial statements, or the month close process starts taking weeks of manual labor, or there's a HUGE accounting issue and…

>Quickbooks will do you fine up to $100M in revenue or 8-10+ years in operation. When you cross either of those bridges, you should think about implementing a "real" ERP. I think that very much depends on what market you are in. Sure if you are a Saas, but not if you are a European distributor with stock in two countries with different currencies. Stock adds massive complexity. You might be reaching for a lower end E…

It also depends to an extent on your legal accounting / reporting requirements.

Friends who had businesses in both Poland and Singapore tell me that the difference was like night and day.

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

#436

Post by eru »

chrischen wrote: post #84
_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'd imagine the smart startup engineer folks will never know o this market because they're either working at some place like Google or doing their own thing, and one would need to have worked at a less sophisticated blue chip company to be exposed to these flawed systems.

Some people also worked in finance. That can pay well, but has plenty of SAP or similar crap to deal with.

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

#437

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

_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…

You work in IT and you've never heard of SAP?

That's pretty wild, like not knowing who Microsoft or IBM are.

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

#438

Post by ifokiedoke »

risyachka wrote: post #305
jayjader wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue the comparison still holds for developers of video games - as long as the game's code is not touched upon release. Used to be the norm, nowadays admittedly seems to be disappearing.

Also the amount of skilled professionals needed to write a song and to write a game is slightly put - different. A song surely requires a skilled professional. But a game required dozens of those, with years of experience and lots fo time. Creative industries get way lower pay because the skill level needed is low compared to many others, like law, medicine etc. If you are talented you can paint great pictures or be…

As both a professional programmer and a serious musician I have to _strongly_ disagree with this statement and implore you to consider your biases. I can only assume that you're making this assertion because you either a) don't play an instrument very well, or b) don't play an instrument at all.

First of all, even though "all in one" songwriter/producers exist today, you don't see them in the spotlight until they've already worked on their craft for many, many years. But in most cases, the commercial songs we listen to involve AT MINIMUM 1+ songwriters, 1+ producers, vocalist(s), professional instrumentalists (if it's not a band and/or a song where everything is programmed), an audio engineer, and probably a mastering engineer. And that's on top of the scaffolding of a bunch of other peoples' work (beatmakers, sample packs, recording studios/labels, etc etc). Each one of these people may not be formally educated, but you can bet they've spent years with trial and error honing their craft.

> If you are talented you can paint great pictures or be a great guitar player in 1-2 years.

What makes you think that? And if we're going to have such a low bar for "great", can't we say the same thing with programming? I mean, I know people who go to boot camp for 1 year, work for another, and then call themselves intermediate programmers and get paid $100k+. Same goes for law. I'm sure some real smart and performative people could become great lawyers within a year. The only reason that would never happen is because you literally have to go to law school for X years as mandated by law.

Don't mean to have such an aggressive reaction here, but I am really tired of the crafts being devalued so offhandedly.

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

#439

Post by daemin »

brentm wrote: post #321
nojito wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s almost impossible to switch out of Basecamp and use a competitor. The vast majority of companies like this have perfected the lock-in strategy to ensure that their customers can never leave.

I do recall Basecamp from day one allowed you to export your data which not many other people did. What you do with that and how you get it into something else is another story but also not really their problem.

I remember this too, but the second point is the crux of the usability and lock in. It kind of relies on another product having an importer to ingest it to another product/service. Or you have to pay a consultant to do this for you (write a converter and run it to do the import). Either way it does introduce some friction to leaving and using another service.

There's also the idea that if you provide an easy way to exit the service then people are much more likely to buy the service. Since they know they can easily get out of it if they don't like it.

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

#440

Post by tradewarsonlyn »

lowdose wrote: post #385
economicslol wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my Blockchain Deep Learning Dog Walking app is going to change the world!! I went to Stanford so I must be right! /s

Dog walking is not a viable matchmaking platform business model because successful matches cut out the matchmaker, you didn't get the memo?

Humor fella.. he is kidding!
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