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Nest is acquiring Dropcam

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Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#81

Post by colordrops »

jmduke wrote: post #18

Some interesting quotes from Dropcam's CEO last year: “Our business model is very straightforward. I think if your business model is not straightforward, it veers into potentially being unethical, if you look at things that are quote-unquote ‘free.’ None of the people who work here want to work on something that works like that. They look at it as tricking the user, when [a company is] turning around and using some p…

I hate to be cynical, but I think this statement is a well calculated PR move to make people comfortable with one of the most invasive possible devices there is. You are giving Google access to an always-on camera in your house!

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#82

Post by adestefan »

matt-attack wrote: post #71
thesausageking wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While technically accurate that statement is really misleading. Nest makes a significant amount of revenue from utility companies who pay up to $50 per thermostat per year for Nest agreeing to turn down their usage during peak times. This is a very different model than paying someone for a product. While you buy Nest's product, you are still the product (and selling you is a better business for them long-term).

Wouldn't a for-profit utility company want customers to turn their usage up ?

You make no money when your system fails because it's overloaded. Also, most utilities need to purchase energy from other areas, at a significant premium, during peak usage days.

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#83

Post by rdl »

samstave wrote: post #75
rdl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of value to Google in having everyone on a Google bus being a Googler. You can have sensitive conversations on the bus (also, your employees are less likely to jump ship due to meeting more interesting people...) Google doesn't actually run the bus themselves; it's Bauer. (I hate the SV culture of having sensitive meetings in public cafes and restaurants, especially ones frequented by all your most like…

Kind of funny how your statement is the exact oposite of the famous open office idea: " we have a flat mgmt structure and desks in an open office so the collaboration and free flow of ideas can occur! " SHARED BUSSES!?!?? Wtf! Do we want tech employees sharing ideas and getting poached?!?! What is this communist Russia???

Uh. I want free flow of information inside the company, or of certain kinds of information between companies (or company and general outsiders). You absolutely do not want to share your most sensitive company discussions with your direct competitors. There's also some information which is regulatorially or legally sensitive and can't be shared outside the company before "everyone" has access to it.

Another source of daily irony is I dislike open plan offices in general as a developer; I'm now more a product manager (although I do tech stuff as well, and conference papers, and such), which is a role which does strongly benefit from open plan, and I've also we've built monitorhenge at a pod of desks in open-plan, out of Seiki 39" 4K and portrait-mode 24" U2410 monitors. It's essentially a re-creation of my favorite work environment; a private office shared with a small team.

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#84

Post by rdl »

kooshball wrote: post #78
shiven wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question. Is there any verifiable, quantitative data to substantiate what you wrote or is it all a HackerNews urban-myth? I am genuinely curious because I hear that argument thrown around a lot, anytime non-monetary compensation is being discussed among the HN crowd.

If you're talking about the 5x revenue there are certainly a lot of public data on that. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=aapl+goog+msft+facebook Look for revenue/employee.

And that's with LOTS of overhead people, communications complexity, etc.

If you strip out just the developers at a big company which is very profitable and product focused, you'll get even more insane revenue-per-employee figures.

It's depressing/unpolitic to say, but the "free meals, shuttles, etc." are intended for the developers, management, and other highly-in-demand people. It's probably overall worse for corporate culture to set up multiple tiers of employees, some of whom don't qualify for those perks, but a company with huge numbers of easily-recruited, low-value-add employees (e.g. walmart) tends to have crappy perks; a company with a small number of key employees with absurd productivity and profitability per employee (hedge fund?) tends to have amazing perks.

(That startups tend toward binary outcomes based on the productivity of the first 5-10 people is probably not in dispute here, I assume and hope.)

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#85

Post by smm2000 »

insaneirish wrote: post #67
spacehome wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the fact it's nothing like that at all. The perks are free, and employees are generally paid well - when compared to other professions, if, perhaps not their value add.

> The perks are free Haha. That's cute.

Perks are at least 60% free because company pays for them with pre-tax money (no income tax/payroll taxes).

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#86

Post by derefr »

shiven wrote: post #68
insaneirish wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd work my butt off at a place that provides three-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals > Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday Any company providing you multiple meals per day for free is getting the…

In other words, you're getting the short end of the stick. People do not value perks rationally. If they did, they would deny every last one of them. How many people value anything rationally? Ever? As humans we are programmed to be pain averse. I hate foraging for and/or cooking my food. I consider it an utter waste of my time and breath. Yes, I care about my health, but don't have the money to pay an arm and a leg…

A personal chef isn't rational either--there are economies of scale here. But you could pool your and your coworkers' budgets to get an office chef, for an amount from your paycheque much less than the value of the time you're funging against by deciding to work overtime.

Fully realized, you could have all the benefits offered (selfishly) by your employing corporation instead provided by an employee's union co-op. Even the building. The corporation would just be thin pipe keeping labor flowing in one direction and money flowing in the other.

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#87

Post by prostoalex »

insaneirish wrote: post #66
shiven wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days. WTF is wrong with people!?! I'd work my butt off at a place that provides thrice-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals, on-site gym and sleeping pods!! Hell, I'd have surely done that when I was a decade younge…

> I'd work my butt off at a place that provides three-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals > Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday Any company providing you multiple meals per day for free is getting the…

Assumption here being that by refusing corporate food just anybody can go home and whip up a great healthy meal.

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#88

Post by prostoalex »

prezjordan wrote: post #54
thesausageking wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While technically accurate that statement is really misleading. Nest makes a significant amount of revenue from utility companies who pay up to $50 per thermostat per year for Nest agreeing to turn down their usage during peak times. This is a very different model than paying someone for a product. While you buy Nest's product, you are still the product (and selling you is a better business for them long-term).

So the utility company pays their customers, who in turn lower their bills by using less energy? Why?

http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/plans/smartac/i...

When demand exceeds supply, brown-outs occur which means a lot of unhappy customers and, considering utilities' monopoly status, calls for investigations.

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#89

Post by higherpurpose »

You mean Google is. Remember when Schneier said no too long ago that "Google is in the surveillance business"? Even I didn't take it so literally back then, but it turns out he was just slightly ahead of time with that characterization.

Re: Nest is acquiring Dropcam

#90

Post by hug »

insaneirish wrote: post #66
shiven wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He thinks the lavish perks at many technology companies, especially the free on-campus meals, are a disguised form of mind control, designed to get employees to work 12- or 14-hour days. WTF is wrong with people!?! I'd work my butt off at a place that provides thrice-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals, on-site gym and sleeping pods!! Hell, I'd have surely done that when I was a decade younge…

> I'd work my butt off at a place that provides three-a-day healthy, delicious, diverse, vegetarian (for me) meals > Even after breaking down my yearly compensation to an hourly rate, I bet there will be a marginal difference in the money the company makes by keeping me working the extra hours and the price I'd pay for buying such food everyday Any company providing you multiple meals per day for free is getting the…

Just because you are getting less out of the deal than they are does not mean you are getting less out of the deal than not having any deal at all.

The deal "provide me a decent meal and I'll stay at work another hour or so" is, evaluated rationally, completely 100% fine by me. I'd rather stay at work for an hour than take an hour out of my day to cook & clean, or spend the equivalent of an hour's wage on feeding myself.

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