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Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

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

#311

Post by hef19898 »

pja wrote: post #301
namdnay wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many miles are you putting on that i10?! An oil change is every 2 years or 15k km. I think it’s a bad example btw, it’s a famously reliable car (the taxi of choice in Bogota fwiw)

For some reason people in the US are obsessed with changing the oil in their vehicle. Modern engines & oils don't need the oil changing every 3000 miles, but the folklore belief in the necessity of doing so rolls on unstoppably in the USA.

I have both, two modern cars with services all 30k km and one from the 80s with motor oil changes every 5k, gearbox oil every 10k and axles every 10k as well. Not to mention that modern gearboxes and exles tend to be greased for life.

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

#312

Post by orzig »

onion2k wrote: post #277
yrral wrote: post #16

I think it's that you don't notice things that work well. House foundations, light switches, filesystems, silicon manufacturing, water delivery, grocery store logistics, etc etc etc. These are all things that most people never notice because they just work. It doesn't even occur to people day-to-day that these things can fail.

These are all things that most people never notice because they just work. Taking the example of grocery store logistics, the number of times products are unavailable in my local store makes me thing that's a thing that doesn't "just work". It's something that breaks down regularly, and possibly has lots of people working hard to keep it from breaking even more often. The same is true for lots of things. Stuff like w…

Are those people optimizing for having every product available at every time? They have to balance against the very real cost of spoilage, so I don’t think they consider the occasional out–of–stock as the system breaking

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

#313

Post by PinguTS »

dotancohen wrote: post #304
namdnay wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many miles are you putting on that i10?! An oil change is every 2 years or 15k km. I think it’s a bad example btw, it’s a famously reliable car (the taxi of choice in Bogota fwiw)

Thanks, I updated the post. I had no idea that oil changes are now once every two years. On the wife's Subaru I still change the oil every six months, and I remember when the standard was actually every three months. She puts about 10 km on the car during those six months, we live in a hilltop village half an hour drive from a city.

What? Oil change every three month? WTF is wrong with the US industry?

The very same cars in Europe will have an oil change every 2 years or so. My Volvo S60 Model 2000 has an oil change every 3 years.

There must be something that you get sold on by marketing that is so wrong. BTW. Also a Tesla has oil in their gearbox, even if it is just a single gear integrated into the single unit combined with motor and inverter. For a Model S it is recommend to replace it every 12.5k miles, which is exactly the very same recommendation as with other car model.

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

#315

Post by Ekaros »

ashtonkem wrote: post #244
Dunedan wrote: post #230

> 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 "m…

Twitter is a mid sized tech company though, with a mere 5,500 employees. Facebook and Google are an order of magnitude bigger, and half the size of Uber and Netflix. It’s also a tiny bit smaller than Doordash and AirBnB by comparison.

Mid sized compared to essentially mega corps... I wouldn't consider them mid sized on any reasonable metric.

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

#316

Post by nly »

dotancohen wrote: post #265
roland35 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe more expensive up front but probably cheaper in the long run!

Just like a quality automobile, to bring the discussion closer to the article. For example, a Tesla Model 3 might cost more than a Hyundai I10, but after three years of ownership you've not had to change the oil, fill it with gas, get the tailpipe emissions inspected, possibly see the catalytic converter stolen, etc. And the difference in maintenance only grows from there, when the plugs and timing belt and seals and…

My partner leases a petrol car, and except for pumping up the tyres every now and then we've never done anything to it.

Servicing is fully covered and the garage keeps track of when things need changing.

It wasn't so long ago that leasing was actually cheaper option than buying (on credit).

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

#318

Post by ownagefool »

kccqzy wrote: post #242

> An example from another industry: when I worked at a small chip startup, we had in-house capability to do end-to-end chip processing (with the exception of having its own fabs), which is unusual for a small chip startup. When the first wafer of a new design came off of a fab, we'd have the wafer flown to us on a commercial flight, at which point someone would use a wafer saw to cut the wafer into individual chips s…

What if the saw breaks, what if the person who knows how to use the saw leaves?

There are good answers to these problems, but I find folks who find comfort in outsourcing assume it's easier for the downstream org solve them.

Personal experience suggests it's often a false sense of security, and you often have to have your own experts anyway.

Saw the same in software. We won't get budget to patch so let's outsource. The outsourced entity also doesn't patch, because there's no business case approval to do so. The problem is usually tech is ran by finance.

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

#319

Post by wheybags »

astrange wrote: post #158
asdff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap stuff that used to be wood or metal and last for 100 years has turned into plastic cheap stuff that you write a nyt column about if it manages to survive the demands of regular expected usage for 1 year.

I don't have any plastic stuff that breaks. My supposedly bad Ikea furniture has all survived 3 moves, none of my kitchen tools break, car's about to last 10+ years. I think my worst problem with something I own is my PC fans are too loud.

Presuming it's a desktop, and you haven't done so already - try replacing the fans with some noctua ones

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

#320

Post by Aeolun »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #141
Aeolun wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I read it, but not all the way to the end. This was almost a novel.

Because I’m a writer, I’m going to be a bit pedantic here. Novels start around 50,000 words and usually take several hours to read. ;)

Novella then? Guess that’s still not quite what the article is, but it’s a bit hard to get through in one sitting.
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