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The joyless world of data-driven startups

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Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#11

Post by frandroid »

noelwelsh wrote: post #4

I think the article goes a bit too far against data. Hits like Bohemian Rhapsody are by their nature freak events and not easily reproducible. Nobody is suggesting (I hope) that you can achieve that kind of success without a healthy dose of luck. However I agree that for early stage startups data driven decision making can be difficult. My experience is its expensive and you often have very little data. The other iss…

> Hits like Bohemian Rhapsody are by their nature freak events and not easily reproducible.

Just like startups...

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#12

Post by mwsherman »

“Epistemology”, he whispered.

Using data is good, but “based on” offers a lot of wiggle room. A 10% increase in CTR is nothing to sneeze at, but it does not answer the question of the best use of your engineers’ (or designers’, or marketers’) time. Should they have instead been working on the thing that has a 50% chance of a 20% improvement? How do we account for all the data we didn’t bring to bear?

The data is small, the interpretation is big.

There is also the problem that philosophers call “regress”, which is that every rational decision has to trace back to a premise that one assumes in. Should we be in the business we are in, compared to all the other potential uses of talent? We can’t know that empirically, at root.

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#13

Post by upquark »

Lots of ignorance in the article and some of the comments regarding data-driven decision making. Does the author realize how much of the civilization around us is built and guided by data-driven decisions? Also, people/companies not being able to effectively use their measurements to their advantage is not really evidence against the idea itself. When your model doesn't work, it's not modeling that's broken, it's just your model.

Gut reactions can take us only so far: they break down as we move away from single human-scale familiar problems (ones that the brain has some built-in, evolved capacity of handling, such as reading other people's facial expressions).

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#14

Post by frandroid »

baddox wrote: post #7

> Sometimes it works. Sometimes it’s critical. But sometimes it fails, or results in unintended consequences that we may not notice for years. > Data-driven journalism gave us Buzzfeed > Data-driven music gave us X-Factor and Pop Idol > Data-driven movies gave us 25 Hollywood sequels planned for this year > Data-driven education gave us Key Performance Indicators and Teaching to the test These first three examples ar…

> Data-driven movies gave us 25 Hollywood sequels planned for this year

You mean, data-driven movie investment. Movie producers don't want the same thing as cinephiles.

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#15

Post by baddox »

frandroid wrote: post #14
baddox wrote: post #7

> Sometimes it works. Sometimes it’s critical. But sometimes it fails, or results in unintended consequences that we may not notice for years. > Data-driven journalism gave us Buzzfeed > Data-driven music gave us X-Factor and Pop Idol > Data-driven movies gave us 25 Hollywood sequels planned for this year > Data-driven education gave us Key Performance Indicators and Teaching to the test These first three examples ar…

> Data-driven movies gave us 25 Hollywood sequels planned for this year You mean, data-driven movie investment. Movie producers don't want the same thing as cinephiles.

True, and given the tiny portion of people who are cinephiles, that seems reasonable.

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#16

Post by jes »

mwsherman wrote: post #12

“Epistemology”, he whispered. Using data is good, but “based on” offers a lot of wiggle room. A 10% increase in CTR is nothing to sneeze at, but it does not answer the question of the best use of your engineers’ (or designers’, or marketers’) time. Should they have instead been working on the thing that has a 50% chance of a 20% improvement? How do we account for all the data we didn’t bring to bear? The data is smal…

+1 for epistemology.

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#17

Post by lukethomas »

Being data-driven is detrimental when it replaces common-sense (talking to users, collecting feedback, improving based on feedback).

Before the internet (and being able to track every single action), successful companies were built. It can be done. Using data to drive decisions has some value, but it's not the end-all solution, it's merely a piece of the puzzle.

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#18

Post by hyperion2010 »

There is a looming disaster of a similar nature coming in healthcare too.

Data shouldn't be used to set goals it should be used to achieve them. It may also tell you when it is not currently possible to achieve your goal. That doesn't mean you should throw up your hands and set goals that the data seems to indicate are achievable because (among other things) that is tantamount to believing we can actually predict the future.

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#19

Post by alansammarone »

baddox wrote: post #10
api wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The failure is the failure to generate novelty or adequately explore alternatives. Enough people might reliable go see 25 sequels, but none of those films will be memorable. None will advance the art of film-making. None will change anyone's life or mentality or affect the culture in any meaningful way. Being data driven means chasing the biggest, loudest signal in your data set. It means pandering to that signal, be…

> The failure is the failure to generate novelty or adequately explore alternatives. Perhaps you value novelty more than the average person. What might not be "adequate" for you might very well be adequate for a huge portion of people. Throughout this comment you mention several potential goals of content producers (being memorable, advancing the art, changing someone's life, etc.), but you make no argument for why t…

It's seems clear that any content that advances the art is better than a content doesn't advance the art. I guess that what he meant is that global maxima is better than local maxima (which is clearly true), and data-driven vision is a hill climbing strategy, thus locking you into a local maxima.

Re: The joyless world of data-driven startups

#20

Post by HaloZero »

api wrote: post #8
baddox wrote: post #7

> Sometimes it works. Sometimes it’s critical. But sometimes it fails, or results in unintended consequences that we may not notice for years. > Data-driven journalism gave us Buzzfeed > Data-driven music gave us X-Factor and Pop Idol > Data-driven movies gave us 25 Hollywood sequels planned for this year > Data-driven education gave us Key Performance Indicators and Teaching to the test These first three examples ar…

The failure is the failure to generate novelty or adequately explore alternatives. Enough people might reliable go see 25 sequels, but none of those films will be memorable. None will advance the art of film-making. None will change anyone's life or mentality or affect the culture in any meaningful way. Being data driven means chasing the biggest, loudest signal in your data set. It means pandering to that signal, be…

You can make exceptions to all those rules though. Empire Strikes Back is probably the most obvious example of a sequel that was far and beyond the first and changed cinema.

If you're talking about money-making sequels than Toy Story 2 and 3 were memorable and interesting.

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