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Southwest Headquarters Tour

katherinemichel.github.io

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Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#81

Post by miki123211 »

ivraatiems wrote: post #29

A few years ago, I got a tour of Starbucks headquarters from a friend. One thing I didn't expect: it's literally filled with rooms where people just taste coffee, all day, every day, to make sure it's what it's supposed to be. It's crazy how even something which feels mediocre so much of the time - fast-food coffee, a budget airline - requires an enormous amount of human effort to pull off reliably. (And yes, you can…

This is why Starbucks and mcDonalds win over mom-and-pop.

If you have this kind of scale, you can do crazy things. You have enough data to AB test every single decision, not necessarily even via customer surveillance, you can just have half of the restaurants do A and the other half do B for a month, and then compare results. You can optimize the hell out of everything. You can do focus group testing to discover what customers really want. You can hire the world's foremost expert in chair design to design chairs which fulfill your business goals.

If you're a mom-and-pop, you go off on vibes and on "Karen Smith posted an angry review on Google Maps and she mentioned that the coffee tasted bad, so let's change the coffee."

Apps like Uber Eats change this dynamic a bit, as they can use the power of 0-marginal-cost software to write some of these optimizations once, and then deliver them to all their customers, no matter how small, sometimes without those customers' explicit knowledge.

Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#82

Post by neonstatic »

LastTrain wrote: post #74
neonstatic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "sadly" comment in the article is also a narrative. No offense.

It isn't a narrative, it is simply a point of view. Are we happy there aren't more women pilots? That would be your POV.

The narrative is "it is important that genders are equally represented in all professions". The "sadly" indicates that - it assumes that equality of representation is good and expected, so the fact that it was found to not be the case is "sad".

> Are we happy there aren't more women pilots?

I'm sorry, what? Who's we? You and... ?

> That would be your POV

If you want to know my POV all you have to do is ask.

Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#83

Post by miki123211 »

rgovostes wrote: post #70

There was a charming reality TV show in the 2000s called "Airline"[0] in which a camera crew followed around Southwest ground operations, cabin crew, and passengers. There was a British series that aired around the same time about Heathrow, unsurprisingly called "Airport". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_%28American_TV_series%...

There was also a British series called Airline (about EasyJet I think). Aired in the late 90s and early 2000s; the episode I remember most vividly is the 9/11 one. It's on Youtube, which is how I discovered it.

Britain has plenty of these; there was one about Virgin, there's one about Scotland's national airline (on iPlayer, $4/mo Windscribe subscription required if you live outside the UK), "Heathrow, Britain's Busiest Airport" is another longstanding one about Heathrow.

A Youtube channel called Our Stories is a good place to find such content.

Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#84

Post by miki123211 »

jtchang wrote: post #15

Fantastic write up. It's mind blowing how much complexity there is to keep flights going day in and day out. My guess is all airline NOCs operate 24/7 as flights happen around the clock. Also planes typically don't have much downtime as that loses money so everything has to be a continuous operation. Cool looking at the pictures of the dashboards. It's nutty to think how much has to be tracked when doing airplane mai…

Not necessarily; some airports are closed at night to keep nearby residents happy. If you're operating a hub-and-spoke airline out of such an airport, there's not much activity going on at night. There's still some; your longhaul flights are still there, so the NOC is likely still open, but there's far less activity than you'd have during the day.

Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#85

Post by birdsongs »

xyzelement wrote: post #37

// We later learned that sadly only 6% of Southwest pilots are women, I am not sure that's a "sadly". I used to fly a lot and talk to flight crews. Aviation is a ton of crazy schedules and nights away from home (I assume this is well known) From a family perspective it's bad enough if dads missing from the house for days at a time, much more catastrophic if mom's not around like that. (A child's relationship with mom…

> From a family perspective it's bad enough if dads missing from the house for days at a time, much more catastrophic if mom's not around like that.

Ah, what is so special that women bring that men can't? Neither women or men are fundamental to raising a child, parents are. Gay couples raise healthy, well-adjusted children all the time without one or the other gender as a parent.

Positioning a family as having women-at-home as a requirement just sounds like old-school misogyny to me. (And also de-valuing the capability of men.) Men are perfectly capable of filling this domestic role as well.

Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#86

Post by oe »

I find it fascinating how with flight attendants there’s such a gap between what your everyday work is and what you need to know. Like every flight is just normal, but then once a career you might find yourself in a plane that’s now upside down on the tarmac and need to evacuate it in one minute. And they manage to do that.

Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#87

Post by FinnKuhn »

miki123211 wrote: post #81
ivraatiems wrote: post #29

A few years ago, I got a tour of Starbucks headquarters from a friend. One thing I didn't expect: it's literally filled with rooms where people just taste coffee, all day, every day, to make sure it's what it's supposed to be. It's crazy how even something which feels mediocre so much of the time - fast-food coffee, a budget airline - requires an enormous amount of human effort to pull off reliably. (And yes, you can…

This is why Starbucks and mcDonalds win over mom-and-pop. If you have this kind of scale, you can do crazy things. You have enough data to AB test every single decision, not necessarily even via customer surveillance, you can just have half of the restaurants do A and the other half do B for a month, and then compare results. You can optimize the hell out of everything. You can do focus group testing to discover what…

While mostly correct it is missing that not all customers in all stores want the same.

Customers in store A might have wildly different preferences to customers in store B. Starbucks can't account for that - small stores can.

Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#88

Post by davemp »

miki123211 wrote: post #81
ivraatiems wrote: post #29

A few years ago, I got a tour of Starbucks headquarters from a friend. One thing I didn't expect: it's literally filled with rooms where people just taste coffee, all day, every day, to make sure it's what it's supposed to be. It's crazy how even something which feels mediocre so much of the time - fast-food coffee, a budget airline - requires an enormous amount of human effort to pull off reliably. (And yes, you can…

This is why Starbucks and mcDonalds win over mom-and-pop. If you have this kind of scale, you can do crazy things. You have enough data to AB test every single decision, not necessarily even via customer surveillance, you can just have half of the restaurants do A and the other half do B for a month, and then compare results. You can optimize the hell out of everything. You can do focus group testing to discover what…

I’m not sure how you could suggest starbucks and mcdonalds outcompete based on product quality or ambiance. Have you been to a random mom&pop coffee or burger spot recently?

Chairs aren’t magic, we know roughly what’s good or not. You don’t need a PhD to choose a good chair. A mom and pop could just copy the chair too.

The chains outcompete on marketing, leverage with vendors, etc.

They put a huge amount of effort into baseline quality because it’s incredibly hard to pull off across 1000s of stores staffed by people who don’t have any incentive to care.

Re: Southwest Headquarters Tour

#89

Post by butlike »

miki123211 wrote: post #81
ivraatiems wrote: post #29

A few years ago, I got a tour of Starbucks headquarters from a friend. One thing I didn't expect: it's literally filled with rooms where people just taste coffee, all day, every day, to make sure it's what it's supposed to be. It's crazy how even something which feels mediocre so much of the time - fast-food coffee, a budget airline - requires an enormous amount of human effort to pull off reliably. (And yes, you can…

This is why Starbucks and mcDonalds win over mom-and-pop. If you have this kind of scale, you can do crazy things. You have enough data to AB test every single decision, not necessarily even via customer surveillance, you can just have half of the restaurants do A and the other half do B for a month, and then compare results. You can optimize the hell out of everything. You can do focus group testing to discover what…

You gave me an idea I've not thought about before: whether large corporations view peripheral companies (like Uber Eats, Door Dash, etc.) as friends or enemies...
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