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Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

danluu.com

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Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#221

Post by ncmncm »

dreeple15 wrote: post #205
scaramanga wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's kind of the point. Dan Luu can change his priorities to do a performative display of what interviewers expect and then Dan Luu can pass a job interview. In which case you are not hiring Dan Luu, but a different guy who has most likely internalised a different world-view and set of values. Even if you assume he can compartmentalize his interview performance skills, he will have at least devoted time to…

[dead]

This would be more meaningful if we knew what you think makes a rockstar engineer.

Some people value extreme speed.

Others are impressed by somebody who will dive down a rabbit hole and follow however deep it leads, discovering the linker bug or kernel driver interaction that causes a failure, and patching it.

Or maybe you are impressed that they go away for a month, talking to nobody, and come back with a complete system all ready to ship.

Or they write libraries that everybody uses because they are so exactly what people need.

Or they are always available to explain things to junior people and get them going in the right direction.

Each of those would be unusually valuable, at some places, and would have trouble getting any recognition, at others.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#222

Post by solveit »

dreeple15 wrote: post #205
scaramanga wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's kind of the point. Dan Luu can change his priorities to do a performative display of what interviewers expect and then Dan Luu can pass a job interview. In which case you are not hiring Dan Luu, but a different guy who has most likely internalised a different world-view and set of values. Even if you assume he can compartmentalize his interview performance skills, he will have at least devoted time to…

[dead]

Not sure how I feel about an anon account presumably created for the sole purpose of denigrating someone's ability.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#223

Post by Moru »

folli wrote: post #219
jader201 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. I’ve said this before on other threads, and it seems to resonate with others, so I’ll say it here too: I personally don’t care near as much about a single person’s opinion of a particular topic, as much as I care about the discussion of many people around a particular topic. And by “topic”,…

Conversely, often it's more interesting to read a single person's well researched opinion than a dozen one-off comments.

But on Hackernews those one-off comments can come from years of studying the same topic. Sometimes even explaining why the long well researched opinion missed something so important that the whole article is wrong.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#224

Post by Sniffnoy »

jader201 wrote: post #215
Strilanc wrote: post #88

It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. In particular, the comments seem mostly focused on consumer product build quality whereas the article is more focused on e.g. businesses trying to outsource something (like same day delivery) and getting a worse result even when they pay more than doing it internally. And the cultural obstacle…

> It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. I’ve said this before on other threads, and it seems to resonate with others, so I’ll say it here too: I personally don’t care near as much about a single person’s opinion of a particular topic, as much as I care about the discussion of many people around a particular topic. And by “topic”,…

> And by “topic”, in the case of HN, I mean the title of an article.

The thing is, the topic of the actual article is generally more interesting than the topic suggested by a naive reading of the title (as is the case here).

People discussing things based on titles leads to generic discussions that recur again and again and go nowhere. Whereas the actual topic of the article's content is rather more specific and could lead to an actual new and more specific discussion that might actually go somewhere.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#226

Post by mitchdoogle »

jader201 wrote: post #215
Strilanc wrote: post #88

It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. In particular, the comments seem mostly focused on consumer product build quality whereas the article is more focused on e.g. businesses trying to outsource something (like same day delivery) and getting a worse result even when they pay more than doing it internally. And the cultural obstacle…

> It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. I’ve said this before on other threads, and it seems to resonate with others, so I’ll say it here too: I personally don’t care near as much about a single person’s opinion of a particular topic, as much as I care about the discussion of many people around a particular topic. And by “topic”,…

I have to strongly disagree. The lengthy article has much more thought put into it. It's almost always better researched and the author usually has relevant experience or expertise, and those are usually at least known to the reader in some way or easily discovered.

I have seen many, many cases where a big portion of the top comments are either saying something similar to what the author of the article said, or they are asking a question, or raising a rebuttal, that is already addressed in the article.

Comments are short and probably have close to zero research on average. Experience may play a part, but people don't usually offer up the resume with a comment, so you have no idea if they even have credibility. And there are mountains of witticisms, anecdotes, or emotional arguments that add little to nothing of value to the conversation.

Personally, I almost always read the article and then skim the comments to see if anybody has added any thoughts I might find interesting.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#227

Post by jader201 »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #224
jader201 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty depressing how many of the comments are purely answering the title and not discussing the content of the article. I’ve said this before on other threads, and it seems to resonate with others, so I’ll say it here too: I personally don’t care near as much about a single person’s opinion of a particular topic, as much as I care about the discussion of many people around a particular topic. And by “topic”,…

> And by “topic”, in the case of HN, I mean the title of an article. The thing is, the topic of the actual article is generally more interesting than the topic suggested by a naive reading of the title (as is the case here). People discussing things based on titles leads to generic discussions that recur again and again and go nowhere. Whereas the actual topic of the article's content is rather more specific and coul…

Possibly, but I would bet that many people are upvoting these articles based off a combination of the title + the discussions of the title, which would suggest enough people find those two things interesting (which is why it’s at #1 and why most of the comments are around the title vs. the subject).

Also, if the subject is more interesting than the title, then authors should consider being more thoughtful around a title that fits the subject, vs. making sure people click the article.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#228

Post by ncmncm »

NickNameNick wrote: post #147
et-al wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ, many of these large household companies are shells of their former selves as they've been bought, bankrupted, and traded around. What's left is just a name with no solid product line backing it anymore. E.g. Sunbeam was a solid household appliance name, and now it's a crap. Same with Braun. The easy industrial design exercise seems to be luxurious looking materials paired with cheap electronics. Amaz…

I imagine that makes the slow Denise of Sears/Craftsman particularly unfortunate then.

What?

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#230

Post by Dunedan »

> Some commonly repeated advice is that firms should focus on their "core competencies" and outsource everything else, but if we look mid-sized tech companies, we can see that they often need to have in-house expertise that's far outside what anyone would consider their core competency unless, e.g., every social media company has kernel expertise as a core competency.

I wouldn't call Twitter or any other unicorn a "mid-sized tech company".

I believe the larger a company is the more it makes sense to do stuff in-house. You need a certain amount of people to focus on your core competencies, but once you have that and still have more money than you can ever spend, it makes sense to spend it on doing stuff in-house, as that might lead to better quality and/or lower costs and removes the risk that an external supplier might not be there next month anymore.

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