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How to Lose Money

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Re: How to Lose Money

#251

Post by Bakary »

DC1350 wrote: post #233
nlh wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t believe anyone in the world is truly passionate about things like payroll software. I actually think that’s probably not a good assumption. I know you’re being pejorative, but imagine a scenario where someone has been working for years as a payroll administrator or someone who’s been a consultant working on implementing payroll systems for decades. People learn the market and get sick of the status quo and…

I’m sorry but I still don’t agree > imagine a scenario where someone has been working for years as a payroll administrator or someone who’s been a consultant working on implementing payroll systems for decades These people hate their jobs and only do it for money. No reasonable person would ever do this for fun. Creating new payroll software is just a means to an end that you have to slog through to deal with the int…

I think this is a theory of mind issue. People find motivation in various ways. I admit that payroll software sounds like one of the most boring things imaginable, but it's also one of the most useful and relevant things imaginable as well, since it has a direct impact on people and makes many things easier. I can definitely understand a specialized programmer taking pride in their craft. And why shouldn't they? They're solving real problems and not making superfluous flashy products or skinner boxes.

Re: How to Lose Money

#252

Post by IQunder130 »

DC1350 wrote: post #249
nlh wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this is just not true. I understand this is your perspective but "these people hate their jobs and only do it for money" is impossibly wrong. Sure, some people hate their jobs, but they're probably not the ones who are thinking about ways to make their jobs more efficient and almost certainly aren't the ones who are going and launching new companies. I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs start a lot of compa…

A payroll administrator does not like their job and does enjoy solving their employer’s problems. This is so obvious that I feel like you’re trolling. I’m done talking to you.

You are not even reading the comments you are replying to. When you are immersed in a field for a long time, and master it in and out, there's a good chance you'll be able to find something interesting about it. If you can't, you won't start a new company to solve some problem either.

Re: How to Lose Money

#253

Post by edc117 »

DC1350 wrote: post #233
nlh wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t believe anyone in the world is truly passionate about things like payroll software. I actually think that’s probably not a good assumption. I know you’re being pejorative, but imagine a scenario where someone has been working for years as a payroll administrator or someone who’s been a consultant working on implementing payroll systems for decades. People learn the market and get sick of the status quo and…

I’m sorry but I still don’t agree > imagine a scenario where someone has been working for years as a payroll administrator or someone who’s been a consultant working on implementing payroll systems for decades These people hate their jobs and only do it for money. No reasonable person would ever do this for fun. Creating new payroll software is just a means to an end that you have to slog through to deal with the int…

Hi,

As someone who worked in this space for just shy of a decade, you're wrong. The problems often reduce down to challenges that are familiar to most people in large scale software (CRUD entry, redistribution of %s or #s, scaling and performance, testing, etc), and people who love their craft will enjoy solving those challenges. It's like saying no one could ever possibly enjoy math; just silly.

Re: How to Lose Money

#254

Post by boatsie »

nlh wrote: post #231
DC1350 wrote: post #169

> Do things because you have genuine interest in them... Don’t start out with a singular goal of making money. I really hate advice like this. Have you ever seen a business before? Have you ever met a person? Pretty much no interests are monetizable and almost all companies are doing really boring work. I don’t believe anyone in the world is truly passionate about things like payroll software. If I followed my intere…

> I don’t believe anyone in the world is truly passionate about things like payroll software. I actually think that’s probably not a good assumption. I know you’re being pejorative, but imagine a scenario where someone has been working for years as a payroll administrator or someone who’s been a consultant working on implementing payroll systems for decades. People learn the market and get sick of the status quo and…

But this assumes that the payroll administrator became that and liked that job in the first place.. and probably the person graduating college did not say “I want to work on payroll”, they probably said “I need to find a way to pay off my student loans.”

Re: How to Lose Money

#256

Post by boatsie »

mumblemumble wrote: post #192
DC1350 wrote: post #169

> Do things because you have genuine interest in them... Don’t start out with a singular goal of making money. I really hate advice like this. Have you ever seen a business before? Have you ever met a person? Pretty much no interests are monetizable and almost all companies are doing really boring work. I don’t believe anyone in the world is truly passionate about things like payroll software. If I followed my intere…

The most lucrative jobs I've held are always working on boring, boring, boring, boring shit. The most interesting work is rarely all that well compensated, because supply and demand, and stories about the exceptions reek of selection bias or selective framing. Nobody wants to actually talk about the boring stuff or the non-spectacular failures, because they don't make for interesting stories. So we forget that Notch…

This is most obvious in the gaming industry. Compensation for developers seems to be lower and hours longer within the gaming industry due to more demand.

Re: How to Lose Money

#257

Post by lytefm »

Bakary wrote: post #251
DC1350 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry but I still don’t agree > imagine a scenario where someone has been working for years as a payroll administrator or someone who’s been a consultant working on implementing payroll systems for decades These people hate their jobs and only do it for money. No reasonable person would ever do this for fun. Creating new payroll software is just a means to an end that you have to slog through to deal with the int…

I think this is a theory of mind issue. People find motivation in various ways. I admit that payroll software sounds like one of the most boring things imaginable, but it's also one of the most useful and relevant things imaginable as well, since it has a direct impact on people and makes many things easier. I can definitely understand a specialized programmer taking pride in their craft. And why shouldn't they? They…

I'd even say that payroll software could be a lot more interesting than many other fields. If done right, it shouldn't just be a boring tool that adds some numbers - it should educate its user about the current legislation (e.g. about employee status, tax optimisation), be useful for hiring and budgeting decisions, integrate with banking and accounting software,... I bet tax software isn't too bad, either.

And at the end of the day, the dev hasn't leeched time and money away from some kids, but helped to make a real problem easier instead.

Re: How to Lose Money

#258

Post by verganileonardo »

CoffeePython wrote: post #150
awefasdfasdf wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you arrive at $100-$300/day?

My conversion rate is right at 1%. Product is $25. I think I can realistically drive 400-1200 visitors a day to the site with some focused SEO work.

Why not increase prices?

Demand is pretty inelastic for a course, especially if the company is paying for it. I believe that charging at lesat $400 is the sweetspot, volume decreases (so does customer requests) and profits skyrocket.

Re: How to Lose Money

#259

Post by ClumsyPilot »

eloff wrote: post #238
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If two parties engage in a transaction without coercion, it must be because they are both made better off by the transaction or they would both be less happy without the transaction." That's is about as accurate as physics homework you do in school, two objects collide without friction and air resistance, no energy is lost to sound, heat or deformation of the objects, calculate their resulting velocity. As soon as y…

we're talking about options trading, not cars or drugs. The theory is a remarkably good approximation to reality in this case. If you feel otherwise, you did not establish your point.

I can support my point with decades of data that average retail investor only looses money. I can support it with recent barrelrolls that GME price was doing, with 2008, etc.

Our societies literally have enshrined in law that most people cannot be trusted with financial instruments.

https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/glossary/G3061.html

What do you have to support the claim that "The theory is a remarkably good approximation to reality in this case."?

Re: How to Lose Money

#260

Post by rytis »

DC1350 wrote: post #233
nlh wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t believe anyone in the world is truly passionate about things like payroll software. I actually think that’s probably not a good assumption. I know you’re being pejorative, but imagine a scenario where someone has been working for years as a payroll administrator or someone who’s been a consultant working on implementing payroll systems for decades. People learn the market and get sick of the status quo and…

I’m sorry but I still don’t agree > imagine a scenario where someone has been working for years as a payroll administrator or someone who’s been a consultant working on implementing payroll systems for decades These people hate their jobs and only do it for money. No reasonable person would ever do this for fun. Creating new payroll software is just a means to an end that you have to slog through to deal with the int…

I think you're contradicting yourself. Creating new (payroll) software ticks all the boxes you mention, ie running a company (I can run a company that produces payroll s/w), engineering (writing s/w is engineering, no?), making money (selling payroll f/w is making money). So why do you say that this cannot be fun?
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