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My Business Is Dying

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Re: My Business Is Dying

#71

Post by bayindirh »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #67
bayindirh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription fatigue is real, and I'm currently going through it, but it's not the existence of subscription-only model which nudges me to cancel a membership. If I pay for something, I want the tool to work for me. I can't use an application if it tries to steal my attention all the time. An upgrade pop-up there, a reminder notification there, and the application wears me down. I like quiet applications. It's there.…

This sounds all like Mark Weiser's "Calm Technology" from 20 years ago [1]. I can't await when that future arrives! (I also self-host and have zero subscriptions, except the Proxmox community license - which is, beyond all, a free choice) [1]: https://calmtech.com/

> I can't await when that future arrives!

I don't believe such future will arrive by itself, but we can build a calm tech stack for ourselves. I successfully pruned much of the noisier stuff from my environment, and cutting down subscriptions left and right.

Unfortunately, some of the subscriptions are really useful, or I like how they present the thing I'm working on, so they stay for the time being.

Thanks for the link. I'll be diving into this.

Re: My Business Is Dying

#72

Post by hobofan »

sublinear wrote: post #61
hobofan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places I know that have strict on-premise/air-gap requirements are just investing in on-premise AI and open source harnesses instead. The only ones that don't are the typical places that are slow to adopt technology in general (usually because they can afford to due to historic moat).

Most places that must do things on-prem also have strict requirements and long deadlines. LLMs can be nice sometimes, but not necessary. Internal teams with "not invented here" syndrome currently working on that stuff are ultimately wasting money until the dust settles a bit more. Those long deadlines have nothing to do with implementation. It's the game of telephone and accountability bottlenecks. You still want to…

I can only tell you what we see across our customers, which are exactly the on-premise crowd. We are building a ChatGPT/Cowork competitor focused on on-premise needs[0]. While we cover most things outside of the coding side of things, I know that all of them are also embracing coding agents, typically with your usual open weight coding models hosted on-premise.

Sure, the slow behemoths that you talk about exist as well, but I am seeing many companies that have successfully turned compliance into just another kind of process that isn't slowing down the product development lifecycle. And within those process steps they are also able to leverage AI to speed up e.g. review processes.

[0]: https://github.com/EratoLab/erato

Re: My Business Is Dying

#73

Post by mort96 »

bayindirh wrote: post #39
einrealist wrote: post #18

There is something I'd call Subscription Fatigue. People and businesses are asked to pay subscription fees left and right. If I convert my bank statements only each quarter in a spike or once or twice a year, why should I pay for each month or the entire year? Of course I don't know the real usage patterns of this application, but that's one scenario I'd think of.

Subscription fatigue is real, and I'm currently going through it, but it's not the existence of subscription-only model which nudges me to cancel a membership. If I pay for something, I want the tool to work for me. I can't use an application if it tries to steal my attention all the time. An upgrade pop-up there, a reminder notification there, and the application wears me down. I like quiet applications. It's there.…

This is Nextcloud to me. I use it, but it constantly nags me about some software upgrade I need to do.

People don't appreciate enough that releasing new software has a cost. Upgrading is risky and disruptive. Even on iOS, where app upgrades are as low effort as possible, they're a nuisance; I'm occasionally unable to open an app I need because it's mid-update. One time, I was using an app, closed it to get some information from another app, and when I wanted to go back to the first app I couldn't because it had started an auto update.

Software updates are a necessary evil. As such, they should be as infrequent as is reasonably possible.

Re: My Business Is Dying

#74

Post by bayindirh »

mort96 wrote: post #73
bayindirh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription fatigue is real, and I'm currently going through it, but it's not the existence of subscription-only model which nudges me to cancel a membership. If I pay for something, I want the tool to work for me. I can't use an application if it tries to steal my attention all the time. An upgrade pop-up there, a reminder notification there, and the application wears me down. I like quiet applications. It's there.…

This is Nextcloud to me. I use it, but it constantly nags me about some software upgrade I need to do. People don't appreciate enough that releasing new software has a cost. Upgrading is risky and disruptive. Even on iOS, where app upgrades are as low effort as possible, they're a nuisance; I'm occasionally unable to open an app I need because it's mid-update. One time, I was using an app, closed it to get some infor…

I manage an average sized Nextcloud instance, and see these mails every day, but I believe you can change their interval to something longer under your personal settings. Also, you can disable server notification on your client.

If you want to go nuclear, you can disable update notifications altogether under administrative settings, I believe.

On the other hand, I mostly charge my iOS devices at night, and they handle updates & backups when they are charging. I didn't see an app updating midday for years, I believe.

Nextcloud is a bit too noisy on the app updates department, though, we can all agree on that.

Re: My Business Is Dying

#75

Post by jbs789 »

slazaro wrote: post #69
AdamN wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often think of my experience at Citibank 15 years ago when I closed my account at the branch. The teller said 'sure thing, just put your debit card into the device and enter your pin'. I did that and he said ok I'll close the account and give you cash? I said 'yes' and then it was done. He said, "have a great day!" It was one of the best customer experiences of my life to not have to answer a series of 'why are you…

I agree that most companies are awful at trying to get you to stay when you tell them to leave, but I'd be disappointed if a company didn't care at all to know why I left. If I'm leaving I already have a bad feeling about them, and I would have a worse image of them if they didn't care why. Ideally they wouldn't pressure at all for me to stay and cancellation would be a quick process, and I would be happy to tell the…

Yeah I like to make the question optional. No impact on their exit unless they want to share something.

Re: My Business Is Dying

#76

Post by pas »

bayindirh wrote: post #57
1dom wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're wrong to say "you decimated the thing they care about". The way I see it is those loathing people have a job to care about a thing. The people who gave those loathing people their job also gave another job to another person who's just doing their job too. Everyone has a job with a remit and responsibilities. The role of business leadership and management is to make sure the people and remits operate ha…

Management can be wrong about many things, but this doesn't mean that the "hired gun" as the OP says has to come out swinging. A job is not an object, a human is not a machine. You can be another Nero. Come, burn everything down, and leave, or you can be a compassionate with people, talk with everyone, win minds and hearts and accomplish the same thing. I worked with both kinds of people, clashed with the first even…

it's completely ridiculous that some comments are demonizing OP (who actually cares about the outcome that management told them) when anybody who ever sat in a lame corporate meeting knows exactly what bullshit OP does not want to put up with.

there are so many people just phoning it in, or even worse being (both) socially and technically incompetent.

by what OP said we don't know their usual M.O., and just because they said they can and do cut through bullshit in meetings, does not mean that they are not compassionate with the people who are aligned with the outcome that management wants.

simply because OP does not achieve world peace we shouldn't assume they go around sloshing kerosene everywhere and giving out free hand-held sparklers.

...

and probably the reality is much more mundane and boring. usually technical people have absolutely reasonable concerns , yet most of the time they misjudge the cost-benefit ratios.

Re: My Business Is Dying

#78

Post by bayindirh »

pas wrote: post #76
bayindirh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management can be wrong about many things, but this doesn't mean that the "hired gun" as the OP says has to come out swinging. A job is not an object, a human is not a machine. You can be another Nero. Come, burn everything down, and leave, or you can be a compassionate with people, talk with everyone, win minds and hearts and accomplish the same thing. I worked with both kinds of people, clashed with the first even…

it's completely ridiculous that some comments are demonizing OP (who actually cares about the outcome that management told them) when anybody who ever sat in a lame corporate meeting knows exactly what bullshit OP does not want to put up with. there are so many people just phoning it in, or even worse being (both) socially and technically incompetent. by what OP said we don't know their usual M.O., and just because t…

If that's the case, maybe they shouldn't describe themselves as a hired gun who comes in, does what their boss for that day says, grabs a bag of money and leaves?

I believe that how someone presents themselves tell a lot about them.

Re: My Business Is Dying

#79

Post by teeray »

> AI chat bots can convert PDF to Excel files, but they’re slower and more expensive. I have a feeling a lot of users are using free tier AI chatbots to do their conversions.

I’ve considered this, but gosh does it make me nervous to potentially put that info into training sets. Instead I’ve left that task to local LLMs.

Re: My Business Is Dying

#80

Post by gumby »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #67
bayindirh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription fatigue is real, and I'm currently going through it, but it's not the existence of subscription-only model which nudges me to cancel a membership. If I pay for something, I want the tool to work for me. I can't use an application if it tries to steal my attention all the time. An upgrade pop-up there, a reminder notification there, and the application wears me down. I like quiet applications. It's there.…

This sounds all like Mark Weiser's "Calm Technology" from 20 years ago [1]. I can't await when that future arrives! (I also self-host and have zero subscriptions, except the Proxmox community license - which is, beyond all, a free choice) [1]: https://calmtech.com/

In theory we will delegate this to agents, but really companies can already do that (plenty of software does upgrade itself in backgroud (some doesn’t because the user may want to peg an older version).

But really that cacophony of upgrades etc isn’t about user control, but just companies reminding you they exist. It’s spam, and like spam fighting, agents will not be able to handle it adequately.

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