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How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

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Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#221

Post by brain5ide »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #128
hieunc229 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business guys usually comes together and brag about their works. Quite often, they start to talk about things they heard but don’t understand much. And the other one hear about it, get excited, but also don’t understand much. Then on the meeting, he brought the idea up and convince everyone to do it. The next you know, you’re pulling your hair out trying to understand what is going on

I know a guy that works at a company where the CEO will sell something to customers not knowing anything about the technical details, and then come back to the business and "make them do it".

I was once being sold that as a partnership advantage - that a guy would sell with a .ppt and then afterwards we'd just have to build it.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#222

Post by hellofunk »

I work for a bank and we’re rolling out later this year some new accounting management software for our users, to help them keep track of their budgets etc. Over the last seven years or so I have myself tried using such tools at various banks I have accounts at, and I could never get into it never really enjoyed it. I do use accounting software that is entirely separate from my bank. And some of the ones I used to use were discontinued, perhaps due to lack of interest. So I’m rather certain that what we’re working on is probably not gonna be successful.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#223

Post by noizejoy »

buu700 wrote: post #146
noizejoy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story would probably make little sense to most HN readers, since it's very old and what was very non-obvious back then, became very obvious 5 years later. Around 1994/95 client/server was unassailable in board rooms (much like AI is now). And after initially speaking up against it, I ended up shutting up about my criticism of that architectural approach, since it would have just gotten me fired. So I ended up sne…

This may be a stupid question, but what does "client/server" mean in this context? I would interpret it to mean any networked or Internet-based application that has both client- and server-side logic, which obviously isn't anything special in 2020, but it sounds like you're referring to something else that would now be considered outdated?

> This may be a stupid question, but what does "client/server" mean in this context?

Not a stupid question at all, since terminology has been shifting over the decades.

Back in the early 1990s, the original client/server generally meant all application code (logic and UI) on the client computer, and all the data on the server. So a very fat client.

Database stored procedures (i.e. some logic on the server) only arrived on the scene later during that time, because the original architecture of all code on the client caused performance nightmares. But don’t get me started on the trials and tribulations of early stored procedures. They often caused more project turmoil rather than smoothen things out. — Partly because they weren’t good languages yet, partly because of amplifying developer vs. dba conflicts.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#224

Post by bigbluedots »

petre wrote: post #121
vxNsr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solve self driving? How bout market prediction and just play the market forever. Why would you risk failure when you can just do nothing and make trillions?

Financier Martin Armstrong claims to have exactly such a system but it doesn't predict the market, it only makes quite accurate market forecasts.

I have heard about this guy's forecasts but have been unable to find a list of predicted vs actual. Do you know of such a list?

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#225

Post by kafan1986 »

I worked in a startup, that had around 30 employees (15 in tech at the time) and we had a good product that sold like hot cakes. But due to some issues the company closed that product down. Anyways, we were looking for new ideas.

There was this new guy who was previously in business development and customer support and somehow had got his role changed to associate product manager by talking to CEO, about his passion etc. He suggested a product by reading about a recently funded company in USA. I, a product manager and another one of the product manager, simply rejected the idea given very small market size and complexity of the product and technology required. But CEO bypassed our suggestion and we did build that product for more than 2 years, putting in tons of effort and resources, perfecting it but even then there was hardly any noticeable sales.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#226

Post by noizejoy »

naniwaduni wrote: post #185
buu700 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a stupid question, but what does "client/server" mean in this context? I would interpret it to mean any networked or Internet-based application that has both client- and server-side logic, which obviously isn't anything special in 2020, but it sounds like you're referring to something else that would now be considered outdated?

I might be totally off the mark here, but in context I assumed the contrast was with doing all work on a thick "client". A client-server architecture in principle lets you run thinner clients and offload the heavy work, but in practice the network would've been expensive. A modern analogue might be something like premature distributed computing.

If my memory serves me right, distributed computing was the advent of smaller computers (back then often called mini computers like DEC Vax or IBM AS/400, but those were more like smaller mainframes, still using dumb terminals as frontends.

But you’re right in saying that the original client/server had all of the UI and business logic on a very fat client - and the server only served the data over very low bandwith networks.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#227

Post by usrusr »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #99
reading-at-work wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we all know the project will fail unless someone develops well-perfoming, human-level AGI before Q4/2020 This is hilarious, and makes me wonder how many similar corporate AI initiatives are under way in the world right now.

Dude I see hilariously absurd ideas for AI implementation in both the film and podcast worlds. There is definitely potential - such as transcriptions - but people are way overselling the efficacy and trying to “disrupt” with AI in ways no industry professional is asking for.

Even transcription is hard when it's used in the way manual transcriptions are used. Whenever there is sufficient value in transcription to bring the manual process close to worthwhile the cost of mistakes will also be high. But lower value applications can have much lower quality requirements, e.g. imperfect transcription could still be used to generate a high level topic log of a conversation that might be useful e.g. for backtracking after a digression.

The pinnacle of the low failure cost principle must be ad targeting, it costs nothing besides opportunity to display the wrong ad. And the success metric can even be inverted if the mistake is sufficiently surprising: I'd probably be more likely to deliberately click an ad that is entirely off my beaten path, out of curiosity, than something that aligns with my actual interests. Who wouldn't click on an ad for e.g. curling brooms? Curlers.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#228

Post by hieunc229 »

brain5ide wrote: post #219
hef19898 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What always drives me crazy about instances like this, is that managers and the c-level seem to be much more willing to listen to some "random" guy or blog over their own people. People they hired, people that have a much better understanding of the issue, the processes and so on. This effect is by no means limited to tech. And engineers, regardless of type, are by no means immune to that as soon as they reach higher…

They're just seeking some outside the box solutions. If you don't course correct, how do you know/show that you're driving?

In my case, the business guy stubborn and think he know best, many times.

Every times, I told him it wasn’t what he think. For a few times, I let it go, part to let he learn about the reality. I thought he would change the evaluation process. But no, he still stubborn.

I remember at Microsoft, people would need to win an argument with Bill Gate to get their idea approved. Sometimes, it was a really hear arguments. Maybe some people get inspired by this story too much.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#229

Post by noizejoy »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #218
buu700 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a stupid question, but what does "client/server" mean in this context? I would interpret it to mean any networked or Internet-based application that has both client- and server-side logic, which obviously isn't anything special in 2020, but it sounds like you're referring to something else that would now be considered outdated?

Something like Oracle forms with a custom clinet application talking to a database server.

Yeah - kind of, but Oracle forms originally didn’t even have a graphical client - that’s probably why Powerbuilder and Visual Basic dominated the early 90s. Also, Oracle was still fighting it out with Sybase in the mini computer dbms space.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#230

Post by danielovichdk »

A lot of software is used because there is no better alternative. So it become the norm to use a certain product because there is nothing better.

Every phone OS is absolute shit, and in reality no one wants it, but we have no choice. So it because the norm and we quietly accept it.

Not to mention a lot of frameworks and languages.

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